Pope Francis uses first ever US TV interview to slam climate change deniers as 'fools' and insists 'climate change exists'
He does generally seem to prefer Green/Left doctrine to Roman doctrine
Pope Francis spoke out against climate change deniers, calling them 'fools' in his first ever interview on American television.
The often 'progressive' pontiff spoke with CBS News' Norah O'Donnell at the Vatican this week to give his thoughts on violence in Ukraine and Gaza and other important subjects.
However, he made a pointed effort to express his displeasure with those who deny climate change when asked what he says to those who deny it by O'Donnell.
'There are people who are foolish, and even foolish if they show you them research. they don't believe it,' he said through an interpreter.
'They don't understand the situation or because of their interest, but climate change exists,' he added.
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Geoengineering Test Quietly Launches Salt Crystals into Atmosphere
The nation's first outdoor test to limit global warming by increasing cloud cover launched Tuesday from the deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier in the San Francisco Bay.
The experiment, which organizers didn't widely announce to avoid public backlash, marks the acceleration of a contentious field of research known as solar radiation modification. The concept involves shooting substances such as aerosols into the sky to reflect sunlight away from the Earth.
The move led by researchers at the University of Washington has renewed questions about how to effectively and ethically study promising climate technologies that could also harm communities and ecosystems in unexpected ways. The experiment is spraying microscopic salt particles into the air, and the secrecy surrounding its timing caught even some experts off guard.
"Since this experiment was kept under wraps until the test started, we are eager to see how public engagement is being planned and who will be involved," said Shuchi Talati, the executive director of the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering, a nonprofit that seeks to include developing countries in decisions about solar modification, also known as geoengineering. She is not involved in the experiment and only learned about it after being contacted by a reporter.
"While it complies with all current regulatory requirements, there is a clear need to reexamine what a strong regulatory framework must look like in a world where [solar radiation modification] experimentation is happening," Talati added.
The Coastal Atmospheric Aerosol Research and Engagement, or CAARE, project is using specially built sprayers to shoot trillions of sea salt particles into the sky in an effort to increase the density — and reflective capacity — of marine clouds. The experiment is taking place, when conditions permit, atop the USS Hornet Sea, Air & Space Museum in Alameda, California, and will run through the end of May, according to a weather modification form the team filed with federal regulators.
The project comes as global heat continues to obliterate monthly and yearly temperature records and amid growing interest in solar radiation modification from Silicon Valley funders and some environmental groups. It also follows the termination of a Harvard University experiment last month that planned to inject reflective aerosols into the stratosphere near Sweden before it was canceled after encountering opposition from Indigenous groups.
Solar radiation modification is controversial because widespread use of technologies like marine cloud brightening could alter weather patterns in unclear ways and potentially limit the productivity of fisheries and farms. It also wouldn't address the main cause of climate change — the use of fossil fuels — and could lead to a catastrophic spike in global temperatures if major geoengineering activities were discontinued before greenhouse gases decrease to manageable levels.
The University of Washington and SilverLining, a geoengineering research advocacy group involved in the CAARE project, declined interview requests. The mayor of Alameda, where the experiment is being conducted, didn't respond to emailed questions about the project.
The secrecy surrounding the landmark experiment seems to have been by design, according to The New York Times, which, along with a local newspaper, was granted exclusive access to cover the initial firing of the spray cannons.
"The idea of interfering with nature is so contentious, organizers of Tuesday's test kept the details tightly held, concerned that critics would try to stop them," the Times reported. The White House also distanced itself from the experiment, which is being conducted with the cooperation of a Smithsonian-affiliated museum.
The project team has touted its transparency, noting that visitors to the USS Hornet, which now serves as a floating museum, will be able to view the experiment.
"The world needs to rapidly advance its understanding of the effects of aerosol particles on climate,” Kelly Wanser, the executive director of SilverLining, said in a press release. "With a deep commitment to open science and a culture of humility, the University of Washington has developed an approach that integrates science with societal engagement, and can help society in essential steps toward advancing science, developing regulations, promoting equitable and effective decision-making, and building shared understanding in these areas."
The CAARE project is part of a larger coastal study that the University of Washington consortium is planning to pursue. The second phase of that effort would take place on a pier around a mile offshore in a coastal environment, according to a study description the school released Monday.
While a peer review of that proposal was generally positive, the scientists also flagged some transparency shortcomings.
"One reviewer noted that it would help to have more information on the site location," said a Washington-University-commissioned report. "Is there local resistance or concerns (whether founded or unfounded) around issues like local air quality, etc.? How many options exist, and how do different options affect the field study plan?"
The study plan also made no mention of its potential ecological impacts, a key consideration recommended by a 2022 Biden administration marine cloud brightening workshop. That's a significant oversight, according to Greg Goldsmith, the associate dean for research and development at Chapman University.
"History has shown us that when we insert ourselves into modification of nature, there are always very serious unintended consequences," said Goldsmith, who studies the implications of climate change for plant structure and function. "And therefore, it would be prudent to listen to what history has shown and look for consequences."
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Hertz To Sell Off Even More EVs As Depreciation Losses Mount
The whole plan, it must be said, had the best of intentions.
American rental car giant Hertz saw the way the car market was going and decided to invest in building the largest electric vehicle rental fleet in North America back in 2021. That meant hundreds of thousands of EVs from Tesla, General Motors, Kia, Polestar, Volvo and more. It even got Tom Brady involved in the whole thing.
Unfortunately, a complicated confluence of events—including rapid-fire EV price cuts in 2023 that led to massive depreciation and higher repair costs—have led to nothing but headaches for Hertz. The company has endured massive losses, said goodbye to the CEO behind the move and has since spent the past few months offloading those EVs at fire-sale prices.
This week, the company announced that it's not even done. Hertz's first-quarter financial statement reveals that the company is increasing the amount of EVs it plans to sell privately this year by 10,000 units, aiming for a goal of 30,000 EVs sold in 2024. And it also admitted how much it's been stung by depreciation.
"The company incurred a $195 million charge to vehicle depreciation to write down the EVs held for sale which were remaining in inventory at quarter-end to fair value and recognize the disposition losses on EVs sold in the period," Hertz officials said. It added that depreciation costs are up $339 per vehicle now, and that "of the $339 per unit increase, $119 was related to EVs held for sale."
When you look at the situation on paper, Hertz's retreat from its aggressive EV makes financial sense. Post-pandemic travel is still going strong and so is the rental car business, even with increased competition from rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft or even Turo. Hertz's own Q1 revenue was $2.1 billion, up 2% from 2023. But thanks in large part to huge depreciation costs—almost a third of which it blames on EVs—Hertz's adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization still amounted to $567 million in quarterly losses. In other words, ouch.
First and foremost, last year's round of constant EV price cuts and discounts, led by Tesla, have had a profound impact on the value of cars. That includes private owners, but for companies like Hertz that drive significant revenue from a constant churn of cars in and out of the fleets, it was a major roadblock. And then you had other problems, like higher repair costs after mishaps from customers not used to electric acceleration and trouble sourcing parts from companies like Tesla and Polestar.
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Biden’s Latest Power Plant Power Grab
Almost two years after a similar rule was rejected by the Supreme Court, the Biden administration on Thursday released another final rule for regulating America’s power plants.
Under the rule, coal-fired power plants and most new natural gas-fired power plants would have to eliminate 90% of their carbon emissions by 2039 or close down in 2040.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule would raise electricity costs for Americans, kill manufacturing jobs, and disproportionately affect the poor, farmers, and small business.
EPA’s rule, if it overcomes legal challenges, would result in the closure of coal-fired power plants that now produce 16% of Americans’ electricity. It would make natural gas power generation, which produces 43% of electricity, more costly and increase the incidence of blackouts.
Under the rule, America would become a less attractive location for energy-intensive manufacturing and Americans’ electricity bills would rise.
This is the latest in a series of government attempts to reduce emissions—and power—from the nation’s energy-generating sector.
EPA’s Clean Power Plan, proposed in 2015 under President Barack Obama, stated that if emissions exceeded the agency’s requirements, a state or group of states would be required to shut down power plants or install renewable energy sources.
But although the Clean Air Act allows EPA to set maximum levels of new and existing emissions sources, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency that the law does not allow EPA to shut down power plants.
Specifically, EPA can’t move from regulating individual power plants to regulating regional emissions, as it did in the rejected Clean Power Plan. The high court’s opinion cited the major questions doctrine, according to which Congress must “speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of vast economic and political significance.”
That’s why President Joe Biden’s EPA is trying another tactic to regulate emissions with this latest rule.
Rather than shutting down power plants by regulating regional emissions, as in 2015, the power plants would either have to comply with an unproven technology to sequester, or bury, 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions, or they would have to close down.
Obama issued his Clean Power Plan as a regulation because, despite sizable Democratic majorities in both chambers, Congress didn’t pass legislation to reduce emissions from power plants.
The American Clean Energy and Security Act (introduced in 2009 by Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Edward Markey, D-Mass.) and the American Power Act (introduced the next year by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.) would have accomplished this, but neither proposal became law.
In the same way, Biden’s plan to close power plants would not pass Congress, so he is trying to bring out a regulation to achieve the same goal.
However, this term the Supreme Court is reconsidering the so-called Chevron doctrine, which now gives government agencies wide leeway to interpret laws. That decision is due in May or June.
If the high court overturns the Chevron doctrine, as predicted, EPA’s new power plant rule will be on weaker grounds, because it relies on an ambiguous interpretation.
In 2022, the Supreme Court found the first Clean Power Plan to be an example of “agencies asserting highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted.”
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts argued that “EPA claimed to discover an unheralded power representing a transformative expansion of its regulatory authority in the vague language of a long-extant, but rarely used, statute designed as a gap filler. That discovery allowed it to adopt a regulatory program that Congress had conspicuously declined to enact itself.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch concurred, saying: “The framers [of the Constitution] believed that the power to make new laws regulating private conduct was a grave one that could, if not properly checked, pose a serious threat to individual liberty.”
Severe, government-imposed cuts in carbon emissions raise the cost of electricity and American-made goods. Under EPA’s new rule, power plants would have to invest in more costly equipment or close down.
Cleaner air and efficient power generation are worthwhile goals. But so is the security that comes from a healthy economy and the rule of law.
The Supreme Court, which struck down Obama’s power plant rule in 2022, could well strike down Biden’s version in the future.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/25/bidens-latest-power-plant-power-grab/
***************************************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)
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http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
1 comment:
The current Pope seems to be the fool to me. I don't know what possessed the cardinals to select him but I hope they're over whatever it was when they select his replacement, and the sooner they do the better because this one never was what he should have been.
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