It's no small irony that Nelson founded "Earth Day" on the centenary of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's birthday 

Today is Earth Day, the ecofascists’ favorite day of the year. Here are some excerpts from Mark Alexander’s 2010 essay on the real origin and use of this socialist celebration.

It’s that time of year again — that time when the northern hemisphere will be warming, as it has for millions of years, except during ice ages.

Since most of the world’s industrial capacity and economic wealth is located north of the equator, this means that the now-perennial onset of global warming hysteria is about to sprout into full bloom.

On 22 April 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI) founded “Earth Day” in order to launch an annual “teach in” about conservation and environmental concerns.

Of course, conservation is not a bad word — it even shares the same root word as “conservative.” Indeed, our family makes every effort to use energy and resources wisely. The “waste not, want not” principle is good economic practice.

However, the Left’s motives for “Earth Day” don’t stop at educating folks about conservation and environmental preservation. Those objectives provide cover for a much more sinister purpose — using ecological concern to justify all manner of government regulation and intervention.

It’s no small irony that Nelson founded “Earth Day” on the centenary of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s birthday, as it was the impetus for creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Nelson modeled his anti-capitalist protests after anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of that era, and the so-called “environmental movement” he helped spawn has devolved from a pack of unwashed adolescent peaceniks and malcontents into a slick, influential and well funded cadre of Lefty politicos. (This would be the same movement that protested against nuclear energy, which yields no carbon dioxide as a byproduct of energy production.)

Nelson’s cadre has managed, by way of the EPA, to implement an enormous hidden tax burden on the American people — more than a trillion dollars last year — in the form of runaway environmental regulations, which surreptitiously increase the prices of products and services.

And as far as climate change?

Bottom line: Human activity does affect the climate. Every time you exhale CO2, you increase the concentration of that minuscule greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, but if you want to make a positive impact upon the environment, don’t hold your breath. Roll up your sleeves and promote liberty and free enterprise, because, per capita, it is the free nations of the world that have the cleanest environments, and those with Socialist governments that have the worst.

SOURCE 





The Connection Between Russia and 2 Green Groups Fighting Fracking in US

New Yorkers who are missing out on the natural gas revolution could be victims of Russian spy operations that fund popular environmental groups, current and former U.S. government officials and experts on Russia worry.

Natural gas development of the celebrated Marcellus Shale deposits has spurred jobs and other economic growth in neighboring Pennsylvania. But not in New York, which nearly 10 years ago banned the process of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, to produce natural gas.

Two environmental advocacy groups that successfully lobbied against fracking in New York each received more than $10 million in grants from a foundation in California that got financial support from a Bermuda company congressional investigators linked to the Russians, public documents show.

The environmental groups Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club Foundation received millions of dollars in grants from the San Francisco-based Sea Change Foundation.

“Follow the money trail, and this [New York] ban on fracking could be viewed as an example of successful Russian espionage,” Ken Stiles, a CIA veteran of 29 years who now teaches at Virginia Tech, told The Daily Signal.

To Stiles and other knowledgeable observers, this looks like an actual case of knowing or unknowing collusion with Russia.

Both Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club Foundation also accepted tens of millions from the Energy Foundation, the top recipient of grants from Sea Change, according to foundation and tax records.

When New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, renewed his state’s ban on fracking three years ago, the Natural Resources Defense Council issued a statement supporting the ban. So did the Sierra Club, the primary recipient of grants from its sister organization, the Sierra Club Foundation.

Environmental activists associated with the groups receiving Sea Change Foundation grants continued to pressure Cuomo and other public officials to maintain and expand New York’s fracking ban.

Most recently, the two environmental groups scored another victory when the Delaware River Basin Commission, an interstate regulatory agency that includes the governors of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, proposed a ban on fracking within the Delaware River Basin cutting across all four states.

The Sierra Club and the Natural Resource Defense Council have pressed the regional commission to impose the ban, issuing statements (here and here) calling for  restrictions that are tighter than what the commission proposed.

PennEast Pipeline Co. is set to begin construction on a 120-mile-long pipeline to transport natural gas from the Marcellus Shale across Eastern Pennsylvania into New Jersey. In a new public relations campaign, PennEast asks New Jersey residents if they would rather obtain their energy from Pennsylvania or Russia.

PennEast cites media reports describing how anti-pipeline policies in Massachusetts forced the state into a position where it had to rely on Russian imports of liquified natural gas during peak cold periods this past winter.

More HERE 




Hit climate target or we will ditch your shares: LGIM's threat to dirty companies

Good for private investors who get cheaper shares.  No concern to a company who holds it's shares

One of Europe’s biggest investment managers is preparing to name and shame companies which behave unsustainably – and to ditch billions of pounds of investment in their shares.

Legal and General Investment Management (LGIM), which manages assets worth almost £1 trillion, has stepped up efforts to push the firms in which it invests to clean up their act with a "climate change pledge".

Those who have done well will be "named and famed" next month, said Helena Morrissey, LGIM's head of personal investing. But those who have not listened to the investor will be named and shamed. On top of that, some LGIM funds will dump their shares.

“We work with 90 or so of the world’s largest companies across six sectors whose actions we think will have the biggest implications for climate change in the future,” she told the City Week conference.

“Next month we will be naming and faming, and naming and shaming. The reason we are shaming [the worst performers] is that we gave them a number of years and they did not take any notice.

“There comes a time when we should vote with our feet. We will be divesting from those companies.”

LGIM will initially apply the policy to its entire "future fund" range. It comes as part of a growing campaign to improve corporate behaviour.

Last week LGIM said it would vote against the chairman of any company in the FTSE 350 if female directors make up less than 25pc of the board – bringing personal pressure on the top names at the biggest companies in the country.

Ms Morrissey said the aim is to be both profitable and socially effective.

“Climate change risk is a financial risk – in the last six years, coal companies have lost 75pc of their value,” she said.

She cited the example of HSBC UK which moved its default defined contribution pension scheme to LGIM on the basis that it could simultaneously get strong returns while meeting environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets in its investments.

LGIM is not alone in moving in this direction. Last week Deutsche Bank published a major report showing that investors who use ESG criteria outperform those who invest in companies which fail to meet those non-financial goals.

Earlier this year a UBS study found that investors backing companies with a strong female presence at senior levels will outperform those who do not.

Meanwhile Lord Blackwell, the chairman of Lloyds Banking Group, told the conference that access to EU markets is “not life and death” for Britain’s financial services sector, and that the UK should avoid becoming a rule-taker from an EU which is “less friendly” towards finance.

While trading across the Channel “is important”, it represents just 20pc of the City’s work, the veteran financier said, with domestic business and global non-EU trade both being substantially more important.

In retail and small business banking, Lord Blackwell said the UK may well want to diverge from EU rules – which should not overly concern Brussels as it relates almost entirely to domestic industry.

Corporate and investment banking is a more international business, but even here the Lloyds’ chairman believes the UK would not be sunk without a Brexit deal, as major European companies can use their British operations to access the City.

He did, however, warn of “very significant costs” to the UK and EU if no deal is reached on financial infrastructure for clearing houses and settlement operations.

“The UK will need to be wary of seeking equivalence under a regime that makes the UK adopt all the EU’s directives, as the EU without the UK may have a less friendly attitude towards market activities,” he said.

“The UK’s primary objective must be to preserve its global competitiveness, even if that means some loss of activity in Europe in the long-term.”

SOURCE 




Solar panels could be a source of GenX and other perflourinated contaminants

A scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency confirmed Friday that certain perfluorinated compounds are used in the production of solar panels. In response to a request from the North State Journal, EPA physical scientist Dr. Mark J. Strynar provided 39 records from the SciFinder database used by the EPA to identify applications of PFAS (perfluorinated alkylated substances) with solar panels.

“It appears PFAS are included in solar panel production and thus have the capacity to be sources of PFAS,” Strynar said, via e-mail, after reviewing the records.

Strynar and colleague Andy Lindstrom started research five years ago that first identified GenX contamination in the Cape Fear area downstream from a DuPont chemical plant that operated from the 1970s until 2015. The discovery sparked public outrage in the Wilmington area, resulted in multiple lawsuits over GenX contamination, and the N.C. General Assembly passed a bill to address GenX contamination.

When asked if solar panels contain GenX, Strynar explained that GenX technically is not a chemical but rather a chemical process. The GenX process produces two PFAS compounds commonly referred to as FRD903 and FRD902. Stryman also confirmed that the GenX chemicals are included in the broad classification of PFAS compounds.

According to the EPA, PFASs (which include GenX precursers PFOA and PFOS and the GenX chemical) are a class of man-made chemicals not found naturally in the environment. PFOA and PFOS have been the most extensively produced and studied of these chemicals. Both chemicals are very persistent in the environment and in the human body when exposure occurs. Because the chemicals help reduce friction, they are also used by a variety of industries such as aerospace, automotive, construction and electronics factories or businesses. The long-term health effect of chemicals related to the GenX process in humans is unknown, but studies submitted to the EPA by DuPont from 2006 to 2013 show that it caused tumors and reproductive problems in lab animals.

According to a report provided by the EPA, the GenX chemicals are used as processing aids in the manufacture of Teflon PTFE and Teflon FEP by Chemours. DuPont markets Teflon films for photovoltaic modules that contain Teflon PTFE and Teflon FEP. Chemours was founded in July 2015 as a spinoff from DuPont.

Strynar could not confirm the exact types of PFAS chemicals used in N.C. or U.S. solar panels. Strynar also said he could not confirm whether the EPA or state agencies were investigating solar panel installations as a potential source of PFAS contamination.

“I sure have not heard anything on solar panels.” said Linda Culpepper, interim director of the Division of Water Resources at the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality. “There is a lot of research going on, we are looking at ambient monitoring right now that we started in Jordan Lake the first week of January. Some of the water utilities are looking around.” Culpepper added that there is speculation that some of the PFAS contamination is coming from municipal waste water due to washing clothes that contain PFAS.

The Environmental Working Group released an interactive map showing 11 counties in N.C. with levels of PFAS from EPA monitoring programs, and several are not near the Cape Fear region or the old DuPont facility.

SOURCE 





Australia: Wind turbines delivering next to nothing to grid despite hysteria

Are we completely insane? Well, almost our entire political class and the overwhelming majority of – self-believing – “clever people” seemingly certainly are.

As I write this Wednesday evening, all those wonderful “clean” wind turbines across Victoria and South Australia are pumping out all of 30MW of electricity.

They are supposed to have the capacity to produce more than 3400MW – that’s 1½ Hazelwoods. They were operating at less than 1 per cent of capacity.

How many times do you have to say and write “when the wind don’t blow (and the sun don’t shine) the power don’t flow” to break through the thick skulls of “clever people” from PMs and premiers, through company chairman and CEOs being paid salaries in the millions and all the way down to academics and media idiots?

If the wind doesn’t blow then no power is generated.

Oh wait, sorry; all those turbines across SA and Victoria have now kicked up to producing 74MW. That’s a much more impressive 2 per cent of capacity.

Supply – more accurately, non supply – of electricity is one aspect of the insanity. The other is price. The wholesale price in SA was running at over $130 a MW hour. Victorians were doing a little better at around $108 a MW hour.

As the wind picked up, the SA price plummeted to $126 a MWh and Victoria’s to $106.

In the “bad old days” – all the way back to around 2000 – when we had wicked old, coal-fired power stations chugging away reliably pumping out electricity, irrespective of wind and sun, we paid $20-$30 a MWh, day in and day out.

It was so terribly boring – there’s so much more excitement, indeed real frisson, when prices can change by as much as that in a matter of minutes, as the wind chooses to blow or not.

And of course back then Gaia was crying tears of blood.

Never mind, as the AFR’s renewables (and Tesla) fanboy Ben Potter breathlessly informed us this week, a mammoth 9691 megawatts of new wind and solar capacity would be added to the national energy market by the early 2020s.

One can assume that Potter is as mathematically challenged as energy minister Josh Frydenberg; that like most of our 2018 “clever people” they’ve never had explained to them that any number multiplying zero still gives you zero.

We now have 3400MW of installed – OK, I’ll go along with the joke and call it – “capacity” – wind in Victoria and SA. As I wrote, that was producing all of 30MW, according to the market operator AEMO.

You can add that mammoth 9691MW, but if the wind is blowing as the same gentle zephyr, you’ll kick the relative output up to all of 115 MW.

Pity, that Victoria and SA alone need around 7500MW pretty much every hour, all day. Although, true, presumably the two states will need less by the early 2020s as more and more factories are shuttered as a consequence of crippling power prices.

To emphasise for Josh and Ben and all the others “clever people”/idiots: if you’ve got 3400MW of wind “capacity” and the wind don’t blow you will get zero or close to zero electricity.

You can have 13,000 MW of wind “capacity” and if the wind don’t blow you will still get zero or close to zero electricity.

SOURCE 

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