Newest Polar Bear Alarm Fails Laugh Test

Google News and the establishment media are attempting to frighten people today with claims that polar bears may go extinct by 2100. The claims are absolute rubbish and fail the laugh test.

BBC, CBS, New Scientist, the New York Times, and Science Alert are among the many media outlets hyping the scare today. The scare is based on a new Nature Climate Change paper titled, “Fasting season length sets temporal limits for global polar bear persistence.” In the paper, the authors claim, “Our model captures demographic trends observed during 1979–2016, showing that recruitment and survival impact thresholds may already have been exceeded in some subpopulations. … It also suggests that, with high greenhouse gas emissions, steeply declining reproduction and survival will jeopardize the persistence of all but a few high-Arctic subpopulations by 2100.”

BBC’s uncritical coverage of the report is typical of establishment media coverage. In a story titled “Climate change: Polar bears could be lost by 2100,” the authors write in the first two sentences of the story, “Polar bears will be wiped out by the end of the century unless more is done to tackle climate change, a study predicts. Scientists say some populations have already reached their survival limits as the Arctic sea ice shrinks.”

However, as polar bear scientist Susan Crockford points out, the study’s claims are not based on data, but rather on projections based on extreme, unrealistic warming scenarios. Also, the authors extrapolate population declines from small segments of the polar bear population across the entire polar bear range.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation recently published Crockford’s report, The State of the Polar Bear 2019. Crockford, a zoologist specializing in polar bear research and population trends, provides comprehensive evidence and data showing polar bears are doing quite fine as temperatures continue their modest warming. Indeed, polar bear populations have been rising for more than half a century, and are likely quadruple the number that existed in the 1950s.

As real-world evidence shows something unalarming – in this case, substantial growth in polar bear populations – climate alarmists go to their usual bag of tricks and conjure up dubious computer models, projections, and speculation to trick the general populace into believing global warming is causing a polar bear crisis.

Very dishonest, and very sad.

SOURCE 





Net Zero: Every Urban Street And Front Drive in Britain Will Be Dug Up

The UK faces a £200 billion bill to rewire the country if the government follows through on plans to electrify the country’s homes and transport systems. That’s because installation of electric car chargers and heat pumps will push up demand for power beyond the capacity of the existing wiring.

The findings are set out in a new report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which is published today. According to author Mike Travers, this will mean that most streets in the UK will need to be dug up (with diesel-driven machinery):

“At present new home car chargers and heat pumps are using up all the spare capacity. But we will soon reach the point where the network will not be able to handle the extra demand. So in towns and cities, the underground cables which carry the power will be inadequate. That means that we are going to have to dig up almost every urban street and many rural ones too. The whole distribution grid is going to need to be replaced.”

And the cables that carry power into the homes will need to be dug up too.

According to Travers:

“The power cables taking electricity into your home probably run underneath your front drive. So if you want a car charger and a heat pump you are going to have to pay to dig it up. If you have an expensive monoblocked drive, that will not be cheap. Distribution boards, main fuses and smart meters in homes are going to have to be upgraded too.”

Travers has estimated the cost of all this work at around £200 billion, even before considering the cost caused by the disruption. “Many homeowners will be paying thousands”, he says.

The author:

Mike Travers CEng, MIMechE, FIET is an electrical engineer, whose career spanned periods in the Royal Engineers, in the hydroelectric sector, and industry. He previously sat on the the IET Wiring Regulations Committee and was the industry representative on the committee that rewrote the Grid Codes for Scotland.

His paper is entitled The Hidden Cost of Net Zero: Rewiring the UK

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Biden’s Spoon-Ready ‘Green’ Jobs Plan Is An Economic Disaster

Joe Biden announced plans to make America prosper through the magic of taxing, spending and regulating.

Biden’s plan for economic recovery includes inserting America back into the UN Paris Climate Agreement and spending two trillion dollars on climate change, with 40% of the cash going to “climate justice.”

This is as foolish as it is dangerous.

“When Donald Trump thinks about climate change, the only word he can muster is ‘hoax,’” Biden said, “When I think about climate change, the word I think of is ‘jobs.’”

Biden would create those jobs by mandating and subsidizing inefficiency.

Do you remember the story about the economist who saw workers digging out a canal? He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earthmovers, the workers had shovels.

“You don’t understand,” the bureaucrats explained, “this is a jobs program.”

“I thought you were trying to build a canal,” the economist replied, “If it’s jobs you want, then you should give the workers spoons, not shovels.”

No one seems able to agree on who was speaking, or when and whether this happened, but we all should agree that the lesson is valid. Productivity counts. Inefficiency places a drag on the economy to the detriment of all.

Replacing the energy producers who have given us American energy independence (at last!) with a legion of wind and solar installers is just that sort of inefficiency. They may as well be wielding spoons.

Biden pledged emissions-free electricity generation by 2035 and overall net-zero emissions by 2050.

Can you imagine the economic upheaval in store if we shut down oil, gas, and coal energy in just 15 years and try to replace them by converting our remaining natural spaces into wind farms and solar deserts?

Brace for major upheavals. Kiss automobiles, appliances, housing, and jobs as you know and prefer them goodbye if this misbegotten thinking rules the day.

Larry Bell reminds us in a post at CFACT.org that Biden has ceded his climate plans to the radicals.

His climate committee is co-chaired by John Kerry and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Even the phrase “build back better” comes right out of the UN.

“Approximately three months earlier,” Bell writes, “on April 22, the U.N. announced, ‘as the world begins planning for a post-pandemic recovery, the United Nations is calling on Governments to seize the opportunity to build back better by creating more sustainable, resilient and inclusive societies.”

Peter Murphy warns at CFACT.org that Biden “has become a Trojan horse for climate true believers.”

Don’t forget Biden’s call for “climate justice,” which is nothing more than code for redistribution of wealth.

Joe Biden’s economic and climate plans rest on false premises, are ruinously expensive, would cripple the economy, and would harm, rather than help the environment.

Biden and the Left have no idea how to build. We should leave the building up to free people exercising free choice if we really want to build back better.

SOURCE 





Will the Left Kill America's Energy Dominance?

If the "liberal" green movement had the political power during earlier periods of our nation's history that it has now, we would not have built the railroads. Also, there would be no interstate highway system, and the electric grid system that powers our country would be disconnected and shattered.

What else can one conclude when a significant and vital energy pipeline, the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline from West Virginia into the southern states, has been canceled because of environmental activist opposition? Another pipeline, the Dakota Access Pipeline, has been suspended by a federal judge's order in recent days. Even the urgently needed Keystone XL Pipeline, which will transport natural gas and oil from energy-rich areas in Canada and the Dakotas down to Houston for export and delivery across the country, faces a court-ordered injunction. These actions are all said to be in the name of wetlands preservation, Endangered Species Act issues and other environmental protections.

It isn't safeguarding the safety of our nation. It is sabotaging it.

Pipelines are the most environmentally safe way to transport America's oil and gas resources across the country. They are vital infrastructures that enable America to be the world's energy superpower and make us no longer reliant on Saudi Arabia, Russia and other hostile OPEC countries. The alternative to pipelines is trucks and rail cars, which crash, derail and explode.

The crusade to stop pipelines has nothing to do with clean air or clean water. Natural gas is a wonder fuel. It is cheap, abundant, made in America and clean-burning. The fracking revolution that gave us low-cost natural gas has done more to reduce carbon emissions in the United States than all environmental groups since the beginning of time. It is an environmental blessing.

Let's be honest about what is going on here: The left hates fossil fuels and uses any tactic it can to stop energy development. They want to force America to use "renewable" wind and solar power, both of which are unreliable as stand-alone energy sources. They are also multiple times more expensive ways to generate power. More expensive energy makes everything else America produces more costly and less competitive in global markets.

Liberals say they care about working-class people, but between 5 million and 10 million jobs would be lost without U.S. access to abundant oil, gas and coal resources, according to the American Petroleum Institute. These are mostly union jobs and would be put at risk. At least 1.5 million would be put at risk in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other Midwestern states if the Marcellus Shale "shale revolution" were to end. But when the greens are pitted against the blues (blue-collar workers), the Democrats choose their precious environmental friends. This year, Joe Biden admitted that he is willing to lose thousands of oil and gas jobs to "go green." So much for "Lunch Bucket Joe."

The absurdity of the pipeline bans is that we don't have a cheap way to transport oil and gas from Ohio and middle Pennsylvania to significant urban Northeastern areas such as New York, Boston and the rest of New England. Without a pipeline, these cities may have to continue to import natural gas from Vladimir Putin in Russia. How is that in America's interest?

Free market advocates want to continue to drill here in the U.S., where we have at least 200 years of extractable energy resources, provide low-cost energy to families and businesses, and save millions of high-paying, middle-class jobs. The greens want to shut it all down. Stopping pipelines is the first step toward choking off production and surrendering economic and energy power to our enemies.

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