Climate
July 23, 2021 — Steven Hayward
We all know the Great Barrier Reef is in danger of disappearing because of c—— c—–. The climatistas tell us so, at every opportunity: Well guess what Mom? Check in with The Australian (behind a paywall so here is the relevant text—made available by the indispensable Global Warming Policy Foundation): The annual data on coral cover for the Great Barrier Reef, produced by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, was
»
July 22, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Most people understand that leftists take advantage of real or alleged crises to expand their power. But an equally important phenomenon is that they use crises of various kinds to excuse their own incompetence. (Covid has served such a purpose over the last year and a half; it has become a near-universal excuse for failure of performance.) The recent floods in Germany, which killed more than 150 people, are a
»
July 18, 2021 — Scott Johnson
This week the psickening Jen Psaki casually announced that the Biden administration was guiding Facebook in the censorship of “misinformation” bearing on Covid vaccinations. She followed up with the guidance that those circulating “misinformation” on one platform should be removed from all social media platforms. One weird thing about our political moment is the lack of consensus about how all of this is screamingly batshit crazy. https://t.co/9yOCLZK3wG — Omri Ceren
»
July 13, 2021 — Steven Hayward
As everyone knows, socialism is back big (except in nations that have had it already, like Cuba, Venezuela, California, Seattle, etc). So it is not surprising to see headlines like this: For sustainable finance to work, we will need central planning The holy grail of sustainable finance is figuring out how to distinguish sustainable from unsustainable investments. Get this right, and the public and private sectors have a guide to
»
July 8, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Politico reports a stunner today: the climatistas are begging President Biden not to be too tough on China for human rights violations, or anything else, because . . . it might be bad for the climate! Biden’s new Cold War with China will result in climate collapse, progressives warn As a new Cold War takes shape between the U.S. and China, progressives fear the result will be a dramatically warming
»
July 6, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Cast your mind back to around 1999 or so. I think it was that year that the Sierra Club declared “suburban sprawl” to be the single great environmental problem facing the United States. What? Not climate change?!? I thought climate change was armageddon for the planet?!? Well, yes, environmentalists thought that too, but we’d just signed on to the Kyoto Protocol the year before, giving momentum to the entire United
»
June 16, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Power Line’s sports desk (Paul) is covering the Euro 2020 soccer tournament, but at the risk of annoying him with my soccer denialism, I want to bring to readers’ attention some real excitement yesterday in Munich, when a Greenpeace stuntman seriously injured two spectators, and ripped up the overhead “spidercam,” with a parachute jump into the stadium ostensibly intended as some kind of incoherent climate protest. The Daily Mail has a
»
June 2, 2021 — John Hinderaker
The covid epidemic has had several silver linings, one of which is that we haven’t heard so much about global warming lately. It is hard to sustain multiple hysterias at the same time, apparently. In any event, if you have been wondering what has been going on with the Earth’s climate, Christopher Monckton has the latest at Watts Up With That. Bottom line: we have now gone more than six
»
May 26, 2021 — Steven Hayward
You can find synoptic leftists who say that climate change requires solving every other social problem in human history, but there is in fact a lesson to be drawn between the explosion of homelessness over the last few years and the renewable energy mania proffered as a solution to climate change. Let’s start with this NPR (NPR!!) report on the $1 billion Los Angeles is spending on homelessness, with no
»
May 19, 2021 — John Hinderaker
This story is literally from my back yard. It illustrates how easy it is to blame more or less anything on global warming, and how uncritically such claims are swallowed by the press. If it fits the agenda, it is fit to print. On May 13, the Minnesota Zoo–which is, I believe, the only state-owned zoo in the U.S.–released a statement to the effect that its last two remaining musk
»
May 18, 2021 — Steven Hayward
The Democratic Party’s current obsession with anti-racism uber alles reminds me of the old apocryphal story of the woman who challenged a lecturer (usually said to have been Bertrand Russell) with the proposition that “the entire universe is balanced on the shell of a giant turtle.” To which Russell asked, “What’s the turtle standing on then?” Answer: “You’re very clever young man, but it’s turtles all the way down.” For
»
April 30, 2021 — John Hinderaker
This story from the Telegraph evidently is not a parody. Britain’s spy agency promises to focus on sniffing out other countries’ carbon dioxide emissions: MI6 is placing the climate emergency at the forefront of its international espionage with “green spying” on the world’s big polluters, its new chief has revealed. Richard Moore, head of the UK’s foreign intelligence service, described climate change as the “foremost international foreign policy item for
»
April 22, 2021 — Steven Hayward
If you’re following the news, you’ll know that (P)resident Biden is today hosting a global climate summit, in which his bid is a 50 percent cut in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Most of the incompetent news stories typically neglect to report that the Biden target is set to the baseline year of 2005, which was conveniently about the highest year for U.S. emissions. (The Paris Climate Accords, incidentally, didn’t
»
April 21, 2021 — Steven Hayward
The Washington Post offers up some especially syrupy fan service today, writing about John “Long Face” Kerry. You have to read it not to believe it (extra funny bits in bold): John F. Kerry was on a 757 government plane in November 2016, en route to Antarctica to observe scientists studying the impact of climate change, when he learned that Donald Trump would be the next president. There, high above
»
April 14, 2021 — Steven Hayward
If you have the misfortune to follow the dreary climate change business, you’ll know that one of the fine points is which long-term emissions forecast to plug into your model. Never mind the accuracy of the models for now—even a good model is vulnerable to the age-old GIGO problem—”garbage in, garbage out.” In climate model forecasting, if you have an absurd emissions forecast, you’ll get absurd (but headline-grabbing) results. People
»
April 13, 2021 — Steven Hayward
It is hard to tell sometimes whether the climatistas actually believe their apocalyptic catechism about “settled science,” how we can meet all of our energy needs with wind, solar, and processed banana peels, or whether it is just an excuse to centralize more political power over people and resources, preferably at the international level. (Of course, the two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive.) Or maybe, as we suggested Sunday in
»
April 6, 2021 — Steven Hayward
• If you have a Wall Street Journal subscription, don’t miss today’s Gerard Baker column, “The C-Suite Converts to the New Political Religion.” If you don’t have a subscription, here’s the key part: The modern secularists who deride the hagridden mysticism of traditional religion are now the most devoted congregants in the First Church of Antiracism. Penitents line up to be shriven for their white privilege, bending the knee before
»
