Sunday, December 10, 2023
Let Them Eat Chicken
The worthies attending the United Nations COP28 climate summit in Dubai are mostly not eating meat. That's because they believe and have been told that meat leads to flatulence and flatulence leads to "global warming." Instead, they're getting mostly plant-based food. In another fitting irony, some attendees came from European countries where there is heavy snow and cold temperatures. Their private jets emit far more CO2 than many steaks.
In a press release, The United Arab Emirates environment minister, Mariam Almheiri, said: "We know that our food systems are intrinsically linked to the fate of our natural world, and so we have made the progressive decision to ensure that we explore how the catering provided across the event can be responsible and climate conscious."
Where have we heard versions of this apocalyptic nonsense before? From just about everywhere elites gather and attempt to regulate, increasingly tax us, and limit our freedoms. Global warming is the secular holy of holies and those who don't embrace their "faith" are to be cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
King Charles III ratcheted up his already high hyperbole about climate change when he said at the gathering: " The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth." Was he referring to the Genesis account of creation? Probably not.
In 2009, then-Prince Charles said we had only 96 months to avert "irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse." Two thousand seventeen came and went and we have yet to see a collapse. Neither have any of the other numerous predictions from various climate change apostles come true. It doesn't matter. Just as we have now learned from the British Medical Journals that masking children during the Covid- 19 pandemic had no "real- world effectiveness," we should take the alarmist claims coming from Dubai with a grain of salt substitute.
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, who flew in on his private jet, said he thinks coal plants should not be "permitted anywhere in the world." Kerry, who is not a climate scientist and basically repeats and adds to what he has been told by people who reinforce what he already thinks, has made repeated end- of-the-world predictions. Like Nostradamus and modern religious and secular false prophets, none have come true. But we should believe Kerry now because he said he is becoming "more and more" militant about climate policy. That's because, he says, people are avoiding responsibility. Facts from real experts, not more militancy, is what we need. Avoid believing a "scientific consensus" on climate change. Remember Dr. Anthony "I am science" Fauci's claims that subsequently proved untrue?
How much more of this should we take? Government leaders and bureaucrats are constantly looking for new "crises" to impose their will on us while largely not obeying the laws and regulations they pass. When their forecasts of disaster fail to come true, they quickly move on to the next one.
The fast food chain Chick-fil-A has a billboard ad depicting a cow that says "eat more chicken." Maybe the climate alarmists should adopt that slogan as they continue to promote a false doctrine that if adopted will cost trillions of dollars and not achieve the ends they claim. Doesn't this represent something akin to the old central planning systems of Soviet Russia? We know how that turned out, including a forced famine under Joseph Stalin.
https://townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/2023/12/07/let-them-eat-chicken-n2632079 ?
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Climate Conference Ignores Energy’s Role in Reducing Poverty and Preserving the Environment
As the international climate conference known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP28, starts the first Global Stocktake—a methodology for countries to measure their compliance with the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate—the participating governments would do well to remember that energy is more than a mere commodity; it’s the backbone of human progress.
Energy’s ubiquitous role in our daily lives masks its positive and profound effect on economic growth, medicine, longevity, and wealth creation, empowering people around the world to rise above mere subsistence.
A forthcoming Heritage Foundation special report, “Powering Human Advancement: Why the World Needs Affordable and Reliable Energy,” shows that energy is the thread that weaves the fabric of civilizations together and the universal currency to transact business.
The report shows that countries that harness more than 1,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy per capita begin to lower poverty substantially. Countries that harness more than 10,000 kWh per capita see the virtual elimination of widespread poverty. The conclusion is clear: encouraging energy use reduces global poverty and generates economic growth to overcome environmental concerns. (The Daily Signal is the news and commentary outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
For instance, the health care revolution of the 21st century owes much to the relentless march of energy. Energy has allowed medical discoveries to leap beyond geographical barriers, bringing advanced medical care to far-flung corners of the world.
From the hum of MRI machines to the quiet reliability of vaccine refrigerators in clinics, energy is a silent guardian of health. Neonatal incubators use energy to keep millions of premature babies’ little hearts pounding and lungs breathing. The result of abundant energy has been a century of dramatic reduction in child and disease mortality and a leap in global health standards.
The story of this increased longevity in the past century is, at its core, a tale of energy. Access to clean water, efficient food production, and sanitary facilities—all energy-intensive—have drastically reduced mortality rates. This longevity boom is intertwined with wealth generation. As people live longer, healthier lives, they contribute significantly more to economic prosperity, creating virtuous cycles of wealth and well-being.
In combination with the rule of law, wealth can be generated by affordable and reliable energy sources, and it is this wealth that will, in turn, afford a society to buy pollution scrubbers for their hydrocarbon power plants. Wealth, thus accrued through energy use, not only creates a buffer against long-term environmental degradation, but actively fuels the fight against it. High-income countries with high energy use can afford to remove the worst criteria pollutants from the atmosphere.
Many pundits at COP28 will ignore these realities and blame the harnessing of hydrocarbons as an environmental disaster that has befallen the world, despite hydrocarbons’ many benefits.
COP28 officials should be careful about advocating for solar and wind power without acknowledging their respective drawbacks in terms of cost, their lack of reliability as energy sources, pollution from the manufacture and disposal of solar panels, and the harm to wildlife that wind turbines pose.
COP28 attendees should also recognize how dependent the world, and especially America, are on the Chinese Communist Party for critical minerals that are used in the manufacture of renewables and battery technology. In fact, China already produces 80% of solar components and 65% of lithium-ion batteries that the world uses.
Furthermore, attendees should be cautious about advocating for zero-carbon emissions mandates paid for by raising energy rates on consumers (a form of regressive taxation that hurts the poorest the hardest) or letting supranational bureaucrats intervene in contracts because their preferred energy company did not win.
While some policymakers advocate “allowing” poor people to have air conditioning, some COP28 attendees were against plug-in air conditioners for the poor. We should be wary of such officials using “climate change” as a mechanism to hold back low-income individuals and those in developing nations. Those attending COP28 should not distribute untransparent powers to governments and bureaucrats while also signing expensive deals with dictators like the president of China.
Policymakers at COP28 need to get out of the way of companies that are harnessing energy responsibly and innovatively and recognize the need to pave the way for a legacy of human advancement worldwide. In energy lies not just the power to create but also the power to conserve and protect all that has been created.
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Mind-Bogglingly Costly Green Boondoggles Leave Carbon, Temperatures Virtually Untouched
Through Dec. 12, the “Climate!” crowd is swarming COP28, Dubai’s carbophobia cavalcade.
(COP28 refers to the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, under way in the United Arab Emirates.)
The fact that these global-warming alarmists are surrounded by Earth’s deepest pools of fossil fuels makes their Hajj infinitely ironic.
Also astonishing is the nearly immeasurable impact of these people’s gyrations. They blow trillions of dollars, bludgeon human freedom, and yet do shockingly little to fix their vaunted “climate crisis.” One practically needs an electron microscope to find their promised reductions in allegedly venomous carbon dioxide or supposedly lethal temperatures.
According to #ActInTime’s Climate Clock high above Manhattan’s Union Square, humans have—at this writing—five years and 228 days until we boil to death in a cauldron of steaming carbon.
Since The End is scheduled for Saturday, July 21, 2029 (mark your calendars!), Big Government liberals offer jaw-droppingly paltry climate benefits, despite their spine-chilling predictions and unbridled interventionism.
Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s proposed Clean Power Plan was a diamond-encrusted specimen of do-nothingism. According to a May 2015 analysis by their own Energy Information Agency, between 2015 and 2025, the Clean Power Plan would have slashed real gross domestic product by $993 billion, or an average of $39.7 billion per year. It would have sliced real disposable income by $382 billion, or $15.3 billion annually. It also would have chopped manufacturing shipments by $1.13 trillion, or $45.4 billion per year.
The Energy Information Agency forecast a decrease of 0.035 degrees Fahrenheit. This would have cranked a thermometer from 72 degrees Fahrenheit way down to 71.965 degrees.
As Billy Joel once sang: “Is that all you get for your money?”
Biden’s blessed Inflation Reduction Act budgeted $369 billion for green-energy projects. Goldman Sachs subsequently slapped a $1.2 trillion price tag on it.
Danish environmental expert Bjorn Lomborg ran the Inflation Reduction Act through the United Nations’ climate models. “Impact of new climate legislation,” Lomborg specified. “Unnoticeable: 0.0009°F to 0.028°F in [the year] 2100.”
That would chill thermostats from 72 degrees to 71.9991 degrees. If we get lucky: 71.972 degrees.
Biden said on Jan. 31 that “if we don’t stay under 1.5 degrees Celsius” or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, “we’re going to have a real problem.” If a 0.0009 degrees Fahrenheit reduction costs $369 billion, then Biden’s 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit goal would devour—brace yourself—$1.107 quadrillion—with a Q.
Emperor Biden’s electric-vehicle decree would require that two-thirds of all new cars sold in 2032 be electric. This edict already is stalling the auto industry. Last week, 3,902 U.S. car dealers from all 50 states wrote to Biden. Message: Stop tailgating!
“Already, electric vehicles are stacking up on our lots,” the dealers complained. “The majority of customers are simply not ready to make the change.”
This chaos aside, Biden’s mandate would limit carbon dioxide by 10 billion tons through 2055. Alas, China is expected to generate 320 billion tons of carbon in the next 32 years. So, Biden’s “savings” will asphyxiate in a giant Chinese carbon cloud.
The Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins calculates that Biden’s EV order would decrease planetary emissions by a whopping 0.18%. “The climate effect of the extravagantly expensive Biden plan will steadily approach zero,” Jenkins anticipates.
Rather than jail criminals or deport illegal aliens, Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul bans gas stoves and demands that gas heaters yield to electric heat pumps—never mind that her constituents freeze to death during post-blizzard blackouts.
“The global effect of the costly program of compulsory electrification will be a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of less than 0.05%,” the Empire Center for Public Policy calculates.
Obama, Biden, Hochul, and their comrades might respond that no single bauble will fix everything, and every shiny object helps. Maybe. But these four schemes alone carry an enormously high price in shredded freedom and incinerated taxpayer dollars, yet still leave at least 99.82% of emissions untouched.
As Groundskeeper Willie of “The Simpsons” once said: “Now we’re wasting more energy than Ricky Martin’s girlfriend.”
To quote another Briton, William Shakespeare, perhaps this “sound and fury, signifying nothing” is not about cutting emissions or curbing Earth’s temperatures. Maybe it’s designed to help liberals spend trillions of dollars to signal virtue, bark orders at the American people, and lavish taxpayers’ hard-earned cash on their politically connected pals—from the Potomac to the Persian Gulf.
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Mugged by reality, climate scientists concede defeat
Leading scientists worldwide delivered a striking dose of reality to the United Nations on Sunday: it’s “becoming inevitable” that countries will miss the ambitious target they set eight years ago for limiting the warming of the Earth.
The ominous estimate points to the growing likelihood that global warming will shoot past 1.5 degrees Celsius before the end of this century, inflicting what scientists describe as an overwhelming toll from intensifying storms, drought and heat on people and the economy. It also injects an urgent message into global climate talks in Dubai, where the debate over ramping down fossil fuels is set to flare over the next two weeks.
Surpassing the temperature threshold — even temporarily — would be a major blow to the international Paris climate agreement from 2015, which called for nations to keep global temperatures well within 2 degrees Celsius of their preindustrial levels, and within 1.5 degrees if at all possible. The findings come amid climate talks that for the first time are focused on taking stock of whether almost 200 nations are meeting that goal. Early indications offer a bleak picture.
The 1.5-degree target has become a rallying point for nations attending the COP28 climate talks, despite rising certainty among scientists that the world will spill over that threshold, potentially within a decade. Temperatures have already risen between 1.1 and 1.3 degrees.
It may be possible to bring global temperatures back down again, using still-unproven technological means to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. But at least some overshoot is probably unavoidable, scientists said in the new report to the U.N.
The looming shadow of overshoot is one of 10 stark warnings the researchers presented Sunday in an annual report on top climate science insights from the past year. Launched in 2017, the series is coordinated by scientific organizations Future Earth and Earth League, alongside the World Climate Research Programme, whose scientific work helps inform national climate commitments worldwide. The report is presented each year to the U.N. during its annual climate conference.
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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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