SCOTUS ruled 6-3 that, in effect, without Congressional authorization, the EPA does not have the power to regulate carbon dioxide. Justice Elena Kagan dissented.
Kagan opened her dissent thus (whole opinion; with my paragraphification for screen readability):
Climate change’s causes and dangers are no longer subject to serious doubt. Modern science is “unequivocal that human influence” - in particular, the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide -"has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” [Cites IPCC] ... The rise in temperatures brings with it “increases in heat-related deaths,” “coastal inundation and erosion,” “more frequent and intense hurricanes, floods, and other extreme weather events,” “drought,” “destruction of ecosystems,” and “potentially significant disruptions of food production.” [Cites, of all things, a case in which this was quoted.]
If the current rate of emissions continues, children born this year could live to see parts of the Eastern seaboard swallowed by the ocean. See Brief for Climate Scientists as Amici Curiae 6. Rising waters, scorching heat, and other severe weather conditions could force increases in “mass migration events[,] political crises, civil unrest,” and “even state failure.”
So Kagan has bought and believes, seemingly sincerely, the failed predictions of global warming, which she calls “climate change”. This is her adopted opinion, provided her by climate Experts, who claim there is no “serious doubt” about their theories.
We have seen many times that her (or her ‘Experts’ quoted predictions of doom are false. There have not been an increase, but a decrease, in floods. Same for drought. There is no “destruction of ecosystems.” And just last week a paper appeared- a peer-reviewed paper in the regime-approved journal Nature, going by the name “Declining tropical cyclone frequency under global warming” - which shows the number of tropical cyclones have been decreasing, not increasing.
Here’s a picture from that paper (ignore the straight and red lines, which are models and not the data):
So Kagan’s suppositions about the dooms of global warming are false, and known to be false with only a little investigation. Which she did not make. Nor did Wise Latina, and nor did the other guy who’s now retired and will be quickly forgotten. Both signed Kagan’s dissent.
Their non-curiosity and blind acceptance of the Expert Consensus is point one. And really is our only point, as we’ll see.
Under the Clean Air Act, as Kagan writes, Congress gave power to the “EPA to regulate stationary sources of any substance that ‘causes, or contributes significantly to, air pollution’ and that “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”
As we know, EPA called carbon dioxide, the basis of almost all life on earth, the very stuff of your breath, the food of plants, “pollution”. And started to regulate it. Scientifically, this is like the American Medical Association saying “not all women have cervixes”, and allowing the AMA to regulate the English language.
Do people forget, or maybe they never knew, that CO2 is plant food? And not only plant food, but the plant flood. Back in olden days, they used to teach photosynthesis. No longer? Remove CO2 and plants die. Then you die.
So what the EPA did in trying to regulate CO2 was ridiculous - unless you really do believe global warming, a.k.a. “climate change, is an “existential crisis.” As Kagan, Wise Latina, and Gone Guy believe, or say they do. But which all observations show is not so.
Models, on the other hand, show the “existential crisis” is true. And all models only say what they are told to say. So models are told to say that “climate change” is an “existential crisis.” Experts told models to say this.
Experts, therefore, value models over observation. The Deadly Sin of Reification.
The real problem, then, is letting Experts make decisions based on models which are beautiful, to Experts, but which make lousy predictions. Experts are trusted too much.
Even if you think not, and still believe the models, nothing follows from them. That is, no policy is suggested, implied, or necessary because of the models. Not one. It is separately true that all policies, suggested from any source, have consequences, which may be known to greater or lesser extent - their uncertainty in them also are models.
It is scientism, a fallacy, to say Experts who wrote climate models also know what is best to do about the weather. Scientifically, it is like saying the CDC knows what is the best rate to pay for rent during a disease outbreak. Which they did say. And were rebuked for saying. A rebuke which they ignored. Which may happen here with the EPA, too.
Therefore, even if you believe the models, which stink, a fact that requires only minor effort to check, it does not follow the Experts who created those models, including agents in the EPA, know what is best to do about model predictions.
That power should fall to Congress, and to state and local governments, who have that mandate.
In other words, the Expertocracy, which was in part struck down and which Kagan dissented against, is based on two false assumptions. The first is that Expert models have skill. They do not. And the second, which is independent, is scientism, which is that scientists with expertise in one are are equipped with greater senses of good and evil on all subjects, which is absurd.
Kagan, though, embraces the Expertocracy. She said (her emphasis):
Members of Congress often don’t know enough - and know they don’t know enough - to regulate sensibly on an issue. Of course, Members can and do provide overall direction. But then they rely, as all of us rely in our daily lives, on people with greater expertise and experience. Those people are found in agencies. Congress looks to them to make specific judgments about how to achieve its more general objectives. And it does so especially, though by no means exclusively, when an issue has a scientific or technical dimension. Why wouldn’t Congress instruct EPA to select “the best system of emission reduction,” rather than try to choose that system itself?
Second and relatedly, Members of Congress often can’t know enough - and again, know they can’t - to keep regulatory schemes working across time. Congress usually can’t predict the future - can’t anticipate changing circumstances and the way they will affect varied regulatory techniques. Nor can Congress (realistically) keep track of and respond to fast-flowing developments as they occur.
Kagan is quite wrong. For all the reasons we discussed. Congress (as sick as that institution is) does know enough, and it knows vastly more than weather Experts about law. Because it knows, or is supposed to, what laws are, and what laws should do, and what the consequence of laws are. Climate or weather Experts do not. Congress can consult with Experts: “If we pass this law, what are the bounds of uncertainty on this particular weather-effected thing?” That is sensible. But it is rank foolishness to trust weather Experts to decide what laws are best, even if you by subterfuge call those laws “regulations”. And it even more dangerous to trust people who have something to gain, as Experts do, to decide what is “best” to do.
The impetus for the Expertocracy, and the faith in it, is there in Kagan’s words. She reasons, in effect, that Experts know more than anybody else on their subjects of expertise, therefore we have no right to interfere with their decisions on any subject.
It is a bad argument because Experts don’t always know best about their own subjects, as we see now everywhere. And even if Experts do know best about their subjects, they don’t know what is best to do about them.
Governor Hochul may be in support of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act’s (CLCPA) goals, but she clearly doesn’t want anyone to link her to its costs - certainly not now, with a gubernatorial primary looming.
How else to explain her attack on utility companies asking the Public Service Commission (PSC) to allow rate increases to cover - among other business costs - the cost of buying clean energy and promoting energy efficient homes?
Just months ago. Hochul was eager to approve two expensive renewable energy projects - the Champlain Hudson Power Express and Clean Path New York, which will bring hydro and wind energy to New York City. It was made clear at the time that the costs of those projects would be socialized to all New Yorkers through utility rate hikes, including to upstaters who won’t get any of the energy.
Hochul also supports expensive electrification of buildings, including installation of heat pumps.
But now she objects to utility companies New York State Electric & Gas (NYSEG) and Rochester Gas and Electric (RG&E), both subsidiaries of AVANGRID, pursuing rate increases to fund their own programs that in large part support CLCPA goals.
The companies’ plans include supporting NYSERDA’s Empower program by providing free energy audits and efficiency upgrades for low-to-moderate income customers, support for electric vehicle technology, heat pump installation, more connections to emissions-free wind and solar energy, and investments in battery storage.
In addition, the companies need to replace aging infrastructure to prevent blackouts. This is a national problem. Across America the electricity grid is aging and at increasing risk of failure.
All this costs money, but Hochul has declared it “outrageous,” and “unacceptable” to ask upstaters to pay for these efforts to support the state’s climate policies. It’s all too typical of a politician to blame the costs of their own policies on the parties responsible for their implementation.
And as the primary approaches, Hochul’s reaction to the most recent proposed rate hikes is a transparent attempt to distance herself from the consequences of the CLCPA agenda she supports. Her pitch is mainly aimed at upstate voters. But perhaps if upstaters - who already use mostly clean energy -weren’t being asked to help pay to clean up downstate’s dirty energy supply, this rate increase wouldn’t be such a burden on them.
Just how does Hochul expect utilities to pay for achieving the state’s clean energy and efficiency goals? It’s not clear that she understands how businesses actually work. Companies provide a service and customers pay for it. When government makes expensive policies that companies have to comply with, customers still pay for it.
The only alternative is to have the same people pay via taxes, but despite demands from CLCPA supporters, Hochul’s budget largely ignored the problem of paying for the state’s climate policies. That leaves them to be funded by ratepayers, as PSC commissioner John Howard recently warned.
Hochul also made a big deal of demanding that the PSC carefully scrutinize the companies’ request. But that’s what the Commission does by law - regardless of the Governor’s demands. Her grandstanding is neither here nor there as far as the PSC’s job is concerned, but it allows her to look tough on big business. Unfortunately it also raises the specter of political interference with the PSC.
And this from a Governor who pledged to make New York the country’s most business-friendly state.
Major changes like those set in motion by the CLCPA don’t come free. And to be fair, it was Hochul’s predecessor who signed the CLCPA into law. But it’s clear that she doesn’t want to take either the responsibility of rolling it back or the responsibility of finding ways to pay for it. Instead, she’s going for the low-risk, low-leadership, strategy of trying to give the public freebies, and blaming others when the real costs become known.
It was a cold May night for many in the city of Bengaluru, India. The mercury dipped to 52 degrees Fahrenheit, a low not witnessed in the last 50 years.
The same week, some Indian cities made global headlines not for unusual cold but for extreme heat. Followers of international news likely have seen reports about heat waves and historic high temperatures in South Asia.
“India and Pakistan are no strangers to extreme temperatures, but the current heatwave stands out for its early-season timing, its rapid onset, its extent, and its severity,” reported Vox. “Researchers are now investigating how much human-caused climate change contributed to the severe heat across South Asia.”
However, the mainstream media did not report the record cold that occurred in other parts of India during the same week. It left me wondering: Is the media representing reality accurately or intentionally emphasizing hot weather to promote its climate narrative?
Welcome to the journalism of the climate cult - a systematic reporting of any and every extreme heat event as evidence of pending thermal doomsday while cold weather goes unreported or underreported.
India’s capital Delhi topped the news when the mainstream media used a heat wave as a vehicle for promoting climate fear. Yet at the same time, Western media ignored the coldest day in 50 years in Bengaluru, where I live.
May 12 was the coldest day for the month in the city since 1972. A weather event that had a high probability of occurring, the cold was partly due to a cyclonic system and proof neither of extreme climate change nor of its absence.
Likewise, the extreme heat was a weather event that cannot be attributed exclusively to the trend in global average temperature - a measure that has been reasonably stable since the beginning of this century.
Delhi is notorious for its urban heat island, where a high density of structures causes a heat pocket and compounds the effect of natural warmth. Little relief is provided by houses lacking windows for ventilation and crammed against each other in narrow lanes. The heat can make you feel like a pizza inside a brick oven.
On May 13, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tweeted an image of Delhi heat islands, contrasting the city with the cooler countryside. Most cities in India are now experiencing the phenomenon, the likely reason behind increasingly unbearable conditions in summer months.
If international media were to give equal coverage to hot and cold as weather events, their climate narrative would fall to pieces. The same would happen if reporters were to acknowledge the effects of heat islands in cities like Delhi, Gurgaon, and Pakistan’s Karachi - oft-used examples of so-called climate change’s heat.
This irresponsible reporting extends well beyond Asia. In the past few weeks, unusually cold temperatures were recorded across the globe with little notice from the media.
Canada’s Victoria International Airport set a temperature of 33.4 degree Fahrenheit, the lowest May 12 temperature since 1964. Similarly, in Puerto Rico, Italy, and Spain, the average temperature for April was below normal
In the United States’ lower 48, April temperatures were 1.17 degrees Fahrenheit lower than normal. Even with global wheat futures hitting a high amidst a shortage, the media ignored the disruption of the planting season by cold May weather.
A public brainwashed by a corrupt - or inept - media is ill-equipped to face the real consequences of cold weather while suffering anxiety over a made-up climate emergency.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, VA, and holds a masters degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, UK. He resides in Bengaluru, India.
This commentary was first published at Biz Pac Review May 23, 2022
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Joseph D’Aleo
By the way each year as Vijay will tell you, the major media will report on the pre-monsoonal heat in India that develops and helps draw in the moisture that drives the seasonal monsoon. (BTW the same behavior/hype is seen here in the southwest US before the summer rains).
Expect the media to jump on flooding from the monsoon rains and trying to tie it to greenhouse warming.
See in 2010 here how an Indian PhD scientist, Madhav Khandekar whose career brought him to Canada as a Environment Canada Meteorologist and our very own Wille Soon wrote how the climate modelers and their tinker toy climate models were promising they could predict monsoon success or failure. We could show you the ENSO state (MEI) alone could be used as a skillful predictor.
BTW, Madhav often travels back to India in winter to escape frigid Canada. He reported on Icecap and published papers on how cold in India was the killer not pre monsoonal heat and there were signs that the next cold period may be starting.
In 2020, human deaths due to cold waves were 76 times more than those due to heat waves, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD).
As many as 152 deaths were recorded due to cold waves in 2020 in comparison to just two deaths as a result of heat waves, the Envi-Stats India 2021, Vol. 1 by the Ministry of Statistics, mentioned.
In 2020, deaths from cold waves in proportion to that from heat waves recorded officially were the highest in 20 years, the report mentioned. India recorded 99 days of cold waves in 2020, according to IMD.
There has been a nearly 2.7 times increase in the number of cold wave days from 2017-2020, the report showed. Cold waves killed more Indians than heat waves from 1980-2018.
The number of cold wave days have been consistently on the rise since 2017. In 2018, the country witnessed 63 days of cold waves, which increased 1.5 times to 103 in 2019.
India recorded the least deaths due to heat waves in 2020, when the country was under lockdown for months due to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
In 2011, nearly 60-times more deaths were recorded in comparison to heat waves. Cold waves claimed 722 lives and heat waves 12, according to IMD.
And last Saturday:
URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
National Weather Service Portland OR
137 PM PDT Sat May 28 2022
Northern Oregon Cascades-Cascades in Lane County-South Washington Cascades- including the cities of Santiam Pass, McKenzie Pass, Willamette Pass, and Mount St. Helens
137 PM PDT Sat May 28 2022
...WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 8 PM THIS EVENING TO 11 AM PDT SUNDAY ABOVE 4500 FEET…
* WHAT...Wet snow expected above 4500 feet. Total snow accumulations of 3 to 6 inches for the South Washington, and 5 to 10 inches for the Oregon Cascades with higher amounts expected above 6000 feet. Winds gusting as high as 50 mph on exposed ridges and peaks.
* WHERE...In Oregon, Northern Oregon Cascades and Cascades in Lane County. In Washington, South Washington Cascades.
See here if the earth cools as the next phase of the 60 year +/- cycle goes back cold as was the general opinion was underway at the time:
See how ice cores suggest we may be on the downside of the current interglacial and closer to the next ice age than to a dangerously warm future.
I just got a heating oil delivery - 50% up from the winter ($1067). We live in a modest, energy efficient home. The heating oil is 278% higher in the current administration. Gasoline is up 249% here in New England.
Our country (and world) is in a mess - not just the war in Ukraine - but the UN progressive drive New World Order not just a plan on paper but being implemented. Much of the world is feeling the effect. See this compelling real story on ”41 Inconvenient Truths on the “New Energy Economy”.The elites, most very rich and largely unaffected by their idealistic radical programs that they pushed through the world governments and indoctrinated our young people in schools to support. Many of my colleagues - mostly retired - are engaging in the push back. Those still working for government and schools stay quiet or if they have the courage to be vocal are silenced (see). Even NOAA and NASA have beautiful web sites sadly filled with bad science.
We started Icecap 15 years ago. The software was built for me and my small team. Many of those who I worked with have sadly passed on. I do all the posting now. I am still working in the forecasting industry part time and do consulting work. I am not a programmer and rely on a large web hoster to keep the old software working. The company moved to California from Texas and we were down at times in recent weeks. Thanks for your patience and for your support in the last few years. I came close to shutting it down. I have been told by a team I volunteer for that submitted Request for Reconsideration of the EPA Endangerment finding which attempts to blame all losses from extremes of weather on Greenhouse gases - ignoring the facts they got the science wrong and that CO2 is a plant fertilizer responsible for the rising crop yields that has helped to feed the planet. The Sahara has shrunk 8% in recent decades, our economy thrived when we were energy independent. The plans of the current administration and world governments will lead to not only costly energy but brownouts and blackouts, a real threat in heat and cold to health. Rising energy costs drive up the coast for everything. Remember a few years ago, we warned if carbon control was mandated, the cost for average families would increase by 10-20% (energy and energy based inflation). We are well on the way. Please help us keep going by DONATING even small amounts and get the message out. I am working with scientists to fight the good fight. I have joined the CO2 Coalition team and others as possible.
Thank God for the growing number of organizations and web sites and news services reporting the truth. Here is another one.
Analyst Warns World Has Just ‘Ten Weeks’ of Wheat Supplies Left in Storage
Jack Phillips, The Epoch Times
May 22, 2022 Updated: May 22, 2022
A food insecurity expert said the world has only about 10 weeks of wheat supplies left in storage amid the conflict in Ukraine and as India has moved to bar exports of wheat in recent weeks.
Sara Menker, the CEO of agriculture analytics firm Gro Intelligence, told the United Nations Security Council that the Russia-Ukraine war “simply added fuel to a fire that was long burning,” saying that it is not the primary cause of the wheat shortage. Ukraine and Russia both produce close to about a third of the world’s wheat.
“I want to start by explicitly saying that the Russia-Ukraine war did not start the food security crisis. It simply added fuel to a fire that was long burning. A crisis we detected tremors from long before the COVID 19 pandemic exposed the fragility of our supply chains,” Menker said, according to a transcript.
“I share this because we believe it’s important for you all to understand that even if the war were to end tomorrow, our food security problem isn’t going away anytime soon without concerted action.”
In providing data, Menker said that due to price increases in major crops this year, it’s made another 400 million worldwide “food insecure,” adding that with wheat, the world “currently only [has] 10 weeks of global consumption sitting in inventory around the world.”
“Conditions today are worse than those experienced in 2007 and 2008,” she continued to say. “It is important to note that the lowest grain inventory levels the world has ever seen are now occurring while access to fertilizers is highly constrained, and drought in wheat growing regions around the world is the most extreme it’s been in over 20 years. Similar inventory concerns also apply to corn and other grains. Government estimates are not adding up.”
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of blocking Ukraine from exporting wheat, which Russia has categorically denied. Blinken alleged Moscow is using wheat as a weapon of war.
“The Russian government seems to think that using food as a weapon will help accomplish what its invasion has not ... to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people,” Blinken said.
However, Menker noted that droughts across the world are contributing to wheat shortages. Fertilizer shortages and other weather issues have added fuel to the fire, she also remarked.
It comes as David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program, said the world is now facing “an unprecedented crisis,” noting that 49 million people in 43 nations are “knocking on famine’s door.” With famine comes political destabilization, he noted.
“We are already seeing riots and protesting taking place as we speak - Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Pakistan, Peru,” he said. “We’ve seen destabilizing dynamics already in the Sahel from Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad. These are only signs of things to come.”
Jack Phillips is a breaking news reporter at The Epoch Times based in New York.
References to climate change almost guarantee funding, even for research topics of little interest beyond academia and eco-activists. Polls reveal that most people worry most about energy and food prices, crime, living standards, Putin’s war on Ukraine, and increasing efforts to control their lives.
A recent study by Rutgers University scientists sought to determine how much diversity is required among bee species to sustain wild plant populations. They concluded that ecosystems rely on many bee species to flourish - and “biodiversity is key to sustaining life on Earth,” especially with many species “rapidly going extinct due to climate change and human development.”
US Geological Survey wildlife biologist Sam Droege says wild bees are generally “doing fine.” However, they definitely face challenges, primarily due to habitat loss, disease, and competition from managed honeybees and bumblebees - not to pesticides, since most wild bee species don’t pollinate crops.
That brings us to one of Wokedom’s favorite topics: intersectionality - in this case, actual connections among bees, climate change, habitat losses, and threats to our energy, living standards, and freedoms.
Simply put, the gravest threat to wildlife habitats and biodiversity (and to people’s rights, needs, and living standards) is not climate change. It is policies and programs created, implemented, and imposed in the name of preventing climate change.
Let’s examine habitat and biodiversity threats - without asking whether any climate changes today or in the future are still primarily natural, or are now driven by fossil fuels. Let’s just look at what purported solutions to the alleged “climate crisis” would likely do to the planet and creatures we love. In reality:
The most intensive land use - and thus greatest habitat destruction - is from programs most beloved, advocated, and demanded by rabid greens: wind, solar, biofuel and battery energy, and organic farming.
Team Biden is still intent on getting 100% hydrocarbon-free electricity by 2035. It wants to eliminate fossil fuels throughout the US economy by 2050: no coal or natural gas for electricity generation; no gasoline or diesel for vehicles; no natural gas for manufacturing, heating, cooking or other needs.
America’s electricity demand would soar from 2.7 billion megawatt-hours per year (the fossil fuel portion of total US electricity) to almost 7.5 billion MWh by 2050. Substantial additional generation would be required to constantly recharge backup batteries for windless, sunless periods. Corn-based ethanol demand would disappear, but biofuel crops would have to replace petrochemical feedstocks for paints, plastics, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, cell phones, wind turbine blades, and countless other products.
This is just for the USA. Extrapolate these demands to the rest of a fossil-fuel-free developed world ... to China and India ...and to poor countries determined to take their rightful places among Earth’s healthy and prosperous people - and “clean, green” energy requirements become monumental, incomprehensible.
We’re certainly looking at tens of thousands of offshore wind turbines, millions of onshore turbines, billions of photovoltaic solar panels, billions of vehicle and backup battery modules, and tens of thousands of miles of new transmission lines. Hundreds of millions of acres of US farmland, scenic areas, and wildlife habitats would be affected - blanketed with enormous industrial facilities, biofuel operations, and power lines.
Add in the enormous and unprecedented mining, processing, and manufacturing required to make all these energy-inefficient technologies - mostly outside the United States - and the land use, habitat loss, and toxic pollution would gravely threaten people, wildlife, and the planet.
Let’s take a closer look, now just from a US perspective, but knowing these are global concerns.
Solar power. 72,000 high-tech sun-tracking solar panels at Nevada’s sunny Nellis Air Force Base cover 140 acres but generate only 32,000 MWh per year. That’s 33% of rated capacity; 0.0004% of 2050 US electricity needs. Low-tech stationary panels have far lower efficiency and generating capacity, especially in more northern latitudes. Meeting 2050 US electricity needs would require Nevada sunshine and nearly 235,000 Nellis systems on 33,000,000 acres (equal to Alabama).
Triple that acreage for low-tech stationary panels in less sunny areas. For reference, Dominion Energy alone is planning 490 square miles of panels (8 times Washington, DC) just in Virginia, just for Virginia. Then add all the transmission lines.
Wind power. 355 turbines at Indiana’s Fowler Ridge industrial wind facility cover 50,000 acres (120 acres/turbine) and generate electricity just over 25% of the time. Even at just 50 acres per turbine, meeting 2050 US power needs would require 2 million 1.8-MW wind turbines, on 99,000,000 acres (equal to California), if they generate electricity 25% of the year.
But the more turbines (or solar panels) we need, the more we have to put them in sub-optimal areas, where they might work 15% of the year. The more we install, the more they reduce wind flow for the others. And some of the best US wind zones are along the Canada-to-Texas flyway for migrating birds - which would mean the massive, unsustainable slaughter of cranes, raptors, other birds, and bats.
Go offshore, and even President Biden’s call for 30,000 MW of electricity (2,500 monster 12-MW turbines) wouldn’t meet New York State’s peak summertime electricity needs.
Biofuels and wood pellets. America already grows corn in an area larger than Iowa, to meet current ethanol quotas. Keep-fossil-fuels-in-the-ground lobbyists need to calculate how many acres of soybeans, canola, and other biofuel crops would be needed to replace today’s petrochemical feedstocks; how much water, fertilizer, labor, and fuel would be needed to grow harvest and process them; and how much acreage would have to be taken from food production or converted from bee and wildlife habitat.
Climate activists also approve of cutting down thousands of acres of North American hardwood forests - nearly 300,000,000 trees per year - and turning them into wood pellets, which are hauled by truck and cargo ship to England’s Drax Power Plant. There they are burned to generate electricity so that the UK can “meet its renewable fuel targets.” And that’s just one “carbon-neutral” power plant. That’s one year to slash and burn the fuel, and fifty years to regrow replacement trees. This is not green, sustainable energy.
Organic farming. Environmentalists dream of converting all US (and even all global) agriculture to 100% organic. That would further reduce wildlife habitats - dramatically - especially if we are to simultaneously eliminate world hunger ... and replace petrochemicals organically.
Organic farms require up to 30% more land to achieve the same yields as conventional agriculture, and most of the land needed to make that happen is now forests, wildflower fields, and grasslands. Organic farmers (and consumers) also reject synthetic fertilizers, which means more land would have to be devoted to raising animals for their manure unless human wastes are used. More lost wildlife habitat.
They reject modern chemical pesticides that prevent billions of tons of food from being eaten or ruined but utilize toxic copper, sulfur, and nicotine-based pesticides. They even reject biotechnology (genetic engineering) that creates crops that are blight-resistant, require less water, permit no-till farming, need fewer pesticide treatments, and bring much higher yields per acre. Translation: even less wildlife habitat
There are alternatives, of course. Government mandates and overseers could require that “average” American families live in 640-square-foot apartments, slash their energy use, ride only bicycles or public transportation, and fly only once every few years. They could also switch us to “no-obesity” diets.
Indeed, “scientists” are again saying we “common folks” could “reduce our carbon footprints” by eating less beef and chicken, and more insect protein, ground-up bugs - or roasted bumblebees. Or we could just reduce the number of “cancerous, parasitic” humans. (Perhaps beginning with wannabe overseers?)
quoted predictions of doom are false. There have not been an increase, but a decrease, in floods. Same for drought. There is no “destruction of ecosystems.” And just last week a paper appeared- a peer-reviewed paper in the regime-approved journal Nature, going by the name “Declining tropical cyclone frequency under global warming” - which shows the number of tropical cyclones have been decreasing, not increasing.
