Thursday, January 26, 2023
It Is Not A Conspiracy – Bugs Are, in Fact, on the Menu
This past weekend, the World Economic Forum wrapped up, and the main issue in the press was not some of the daft things proposed by the global elites. No, what had the press bothered is that those of us on the right noticed the inanities.
As noted prior, things began to go sideways early in Davos, Switzerland, when a panel allegedly addressing disinformation was headed up by the famed practitioner of that craft, Brian Stelter. But more speeches and more proposals were trotted out, and the press appears to be rather bothered by the fact that these details were reported on by conservative media.
"In increasingly mainstream corners of the internet and on conservative talk shows," writes Sophia Tulp of the Associated Press, "'The Great Reset' has become shorthand for what skeptics say is a reorganization of society, using global uncertainty as a guise to take away rights. Believers argue that measures including pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates are tools to consolidate power and undercut individual sovereignty." She appears bothered by the use of this phrase, except it was not created out of whole cloth. "The Great Reset" was coined by the WEF in 2020.
Tulp resorts to an "expert" who guides us through the pitfalls of quoting the things spoken at the WEF. "This isn't a conspiracy that is playing out on the extreme fringes," said Alex Friedfeld, a researcher with the Anti-Defamation League who studies anti-government extremism. "We're seeing it on mainstream social media platforms being shared by regular Americans. We were seeing it being spread by mainstream media figures right on their prime time news, on their nightly networks."
Tulp goes on to cite that Fox News, in particular, has been attached to that phrase, invoking the term as much as 60 times in 2022. Imagine the obsession, alluding to "The Great Reset" barely more than once a week!
Joining in on the condemnation of the right-wing press noticing things was Oliver Darcy, the man bequeathed CNN's media watchdog duties when his mentor Stelter had been dispatched last Fall. Darcy, in a recent "Reliable Sources" newsletter entry, is bothered by all of the talks of nefarious proposals being made at the conference. He references a Glenn Beck interview where he entertained a guest "who claimed, unchallenged, that the gathered world leaders want you to eat insects rather than meat." He was echoing Tulp, who also insisted this was a right-wing conspiracy. "Social media users claimed leaders wanted to force the population to eat insects instead of meat in the name of saving the environment."
Why was there the need to challenge someone when the WEF has been doing precisely that?! There are a number of articles attesting to the very goal of getting people to transition to a bug-based diet, touting the merits of this foodstuff and listing off its benefits. And Oliver, Sophia? These were all found on the WEF website.
Last week, the CEO of Siemans spoke at the Davos conference, and he proposed that we, as a planet, need to move 1 billion people off of eating meat. "And I predict that we will have proteins not coming from meat, in the future."
This is not even something being looked at as a future enterprise – it is happening right now. This month, the European Union approved the use of insect-based protein powder for commercial food production, authorizing the placing on the market of Acheta domesticus (house cricket) partially defatted powder as a novel food. This cricket powder is now acceptable to be used in the production of foods such as multigrain bread, crackers, cereal bars, biscuits, beer-like beverages, chocolates, sauces, whey powder, soups, and other items "intended for the general population."
Yep, those crazy conservatives are at it again, noticing when the authorities are acting in a manner that the press claims is just a fantasy. Seriously, how can allegedly professional journalists pretend they are deluding people with their deflecting accusations when this is easily verifiable information?! But, pretend they do, and they seek out sycophantic "experts" to push their claims.
"When we have very high levels of ambiguity, it's very easy to fill in narratives," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who is the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Well, Ms. Jamieson, one might suggest that when you have these very high levels of ambiguity delivered by heads of state, business executives, cultural trendsetters, and representatives from international organizations who gather for a global conference, the blame should rest with those elites for not being clear enough in their proposals. (For the record, I am one of those "ones who might suggest"”)
These high-minded elitists are suggesting global change, yet they are the same who utter unfocused proposals. That ambiguity may, in fact, be by design, as the open-ended plans leave open numerous possibilities down the road. You are mad at those filling in the blanks but not those who originally laid out those blank spaces.
Then you have the very evidence arising that dispels the claim of conspiracies being weaved. That subsequent proof, of course, makes for inconveniences in the reporting – so it is the decision to not report on them at all. This way, the accusations stand, and the outrage is justified.
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Ozone hole recovery claims may be premature and over-optimistic, science writer warns
Large recent holes
Claims by a UN-backed panel of experts that the ozone layer is healing and on track to full recovery may be premature and over-optimistic, Net Zero Watch’s science editor, Dr David Whitehouse, has warned.
Any internet search will find hundreds of news stories announcing that the ozone hole over the Antarctic is slowing filling and that by about the middle of this century mankind’s vandalism of this natural atmospheric layer will have been remedied.
The ozone hole has become an icon of anthropogenic interference in the natural world — and a hopeful signpost that there is a way back. But is the ozone hole really healing? Not by as much as many headlines suggest, it would appear.
The ozone layer — the portion of the stratosphere that protects our planet from the Sun’s ultraviolet rays — thins to form an “ozone hole” above the South Pole every September. Chlorine and bromine in the atmosphere, derived from human-produced compounds, attach to crystals in high-altitude polar clouds initiate ozone-destroying reactions as the Sun reappears at the end of Antarctica’s winter.
Unusual behaviour for three consecutive years
The Antarctic ozone hole usually starts opening during the Southern Hemisphere spring (in late September) and begins to develop during October, usually ending during November. But this has not been the case in the past few years. Data from the last three years show a different behaviour: during this time, the ozone hole has remained larger than usual throughout November and has only come to an end well into December.
The 2022 Antarctic ozone hole was again relatively large and its closure took longer than usual, like 2020 and 2021. This is a different behaviour from what had been seen in the previous 40 years. No one is quite sure what is happening.
Speculating on the cause of this new behaviour Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service Director, Vincent-Henri Peuch said:
"There are several factors influencing the extent and duration of the ozone hole each year, particularly the strength of the Polar vortex and the temperatures in the stratosphere. The last three years have been marked by strong vortices and low temperatures, which has led to consecutive large and long-lasting ozone hole episodes. There is a possible connection with climate change, which tends to cool the stratosphere. It is quite unexpected though to see three unusual ozone holes in a row. It is certainly something to look into further."
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Investors Plow Into Renewables, but Projects Aren’t Getting Built
Even as developers plan an unprecedented number of grid-scale wind and solar installations, project construction is plummeting across the U.S.
Despite billions of dollars in federal tax credits up for grabs and investors eager to fund clean energy projects, the pace of development has ground to a crawl and many renewables plans face an uncertain path to completion. Supply-chain snags, long waits to connect to the grid and challenging regulatory and political environments across the country are contributing to the slowdown, analysts and companies say.
New wind installations plunged 77.5% in the third quarter of 2022 versus the same period the year before, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. New utility-scale solar installations likely fell 40% in 2022 compared with 2021, according to a report from the Solar Energy Industries Association and research firm Wood Mackenzie.
The decline belies enormous demand for renewable projects. The industry is ready to launch a would-be building spree after last year’s spending and climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, extended and increased tax credits for wind and solar projects and introduced new incentives for green hydrogen and battery storage for the electric grid. The success of the IRA, the Biden administration’s climate targets and many state decarbonization plans hinge on adding massive amounts of renewable energy into the grid.
More than $40 billion in wind, solar and battery projects were announced in three months late last year—as much as the total clean-energy investment for all of 2021, according to the industry group American Clean Power Association. Large corporations with climate targets are among the most eager buyers of green power, contracting for enough wind and solar capacity last year to power more than 1,000 data centers.
“Ten years from now there’s going to be a huge shift in the landscape where there is going to be a significant amount of electricity coming from renewables,” said Matt Birchby, president of renewable-project developer and owner Swift Current Energy LLC. “But getting from A to B is inherently going to be messy.”
Supply-chain and trade issues have complicated planning. Average lead times for securing high voltage equipment have risen from 30 weeks to more than 70, Mr. Birchby said.
Sourcing solar panels has turned into the stuff of spy stories as companies try to avoid running afoul of trade regulations and navigate risks and complications of global shipping. “You almost feel like you’re in a Tom Clancy novel,” Mr. Birchby said. Swift Current Energy has contracted to purchase nearly $1 billion in American-made solar panels, he said.
Efforts to create a domestic solar supply chain to meet U.S. project demand are expected to take a few years. Meanwhile, panel imports, 80% of which come from Chinese and other Asian makers, have slowed following U.S. legislation aimed at cracking down on labor abuses in China. Several thousand shipping containers of solar panels have been detained by U.S. Customs near ports such as Los Angeles, according to some estimates.
The wind industry has struggled to overcome pandemic-related supply-chain and logistics challenges in delivering its massive equipment, but uncertainty over the details of federal tax policy has been a significant factor slowing installations. Companies are waiting on Treasury Department guidance to outline the specifics of how a project can qualify for tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Even in battery storage, an industry which saw more installations in 2022, supply-chain problems have slowed some construction plans by as much as a year, developers say.
A bigger unknown is the time and cost to get new batteries or solar or wind farms connected to the grid, as grid operators and interconnecting utilities must study the projects’ likely impact on the power system and any needed network upgrades before signing off on them.
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The failure of Britishvolt is a surprising success for sound business
No one greets failure with quite as much relief as we do in Britain, so let’s chill the champagne, for we have another reason to celebrate. Last week the start-up Britishvolt went into administration, with the loss of 200 jobs. The company had vowed to become the £3.8bn cornerstone of the British electric vehicle sector, by building a battery “gigafactory” in Red Wall Blyth.
The news is desperately disappointing for the employees who have lost their jobs in a region that Westminster has ignored for decades, but at the risk of sounding callous, the rest of us may breathe a sigh of relief. For this failure is actually a surprising success.
Britishvolt executives had reportedly made use of private jets, while scrambling to buy in the manufacturing technology they needed from Germany. The company had no market-ready technology, no customers and no assets beyond a large field in Northumbria. Nevertheless, it besieged the Government for £100m in funding to tide it over to 2024, when it said the first battery packs would roll off its still-unbuilt production lines.
However, with private investors notably wary, officials were unconvinced. Britishvolt failed to meet the thresholds they demanded. So for once, the system has actually worked as it should. While ministers are being chided by their Labour shadows for not doing more, we know we won’t have another DeLorean to rue. But can we be confident this rigour will be the default in the future? I’m not so sure.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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