Climate
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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April 5, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Maybe the only good thing about covid hysteria is that it has, for a while, drowned out global warming hysteria. Still, many people have the impression that global temperatures have warmed alarmingly in recent decades. Unfortunately, there is no reliable record of surface temperatures for a number of reasons, including the fact that the activists who are in charge of the records keep changing them to promote the alarmist position.
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March 23, 2021 — Steven Hayward
You just knew that sooner or later the climatistas would grow anxious about the fact that our current national panic about race might come to eclipse the ongoing leftist panic about climate change, which is of course The Greatest Existential Threat to Humanity.TM So what to do? Naturally, work overtime to link climate and racism. What you get is a mashup of climate change and racism clichés in Scientific American,
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March 19, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Climate pseudo-scientist Michael Mann is litigious, but his track record is poor. Nearly nine years ago, he sued National Review, Mark Steyn and the Competitive Enterprise Institute over a post that Mark did at The Corner, which read in part: Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus. And, when the East Anglia emails came out, Penn State felt obliged
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February 9, 2021 — Steven Hayward
The climatistas are urging President Biden to declare climate change to be a national emergency, thereby tripping enhanced presidential powers under the profligate National Emergencies Act. Trump employed the NEA to divert defense funds to build some of the border wall that Congress refused to fund, and Biden might well raid the defense budget for more windmills or something. My guess is Biden is holding back this step in case
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January 29, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Monsieur John F. Kerry is the Harris-Biden administration’s Climate Ambassador. He is assisted in his diplomatic duties by National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy. Earlier this week they held a press briefing with the psickening Jen Psaki. I have embedded the video below. It is excruciating. The White House transcript can be read without the full effect of Kerry’s otherwise audible hauteur. The gentleman from Madame Tussauds killed the Keystone Pipeline
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January 25, 2021 — Steven Hayward
For 30 years or more, I’ve been pointing out that when you hear someone at an environmental group, such as the Sierra Club or NRDC, has the title “senior scientist,” you can usually assume the person is a lawyer. Hence this detail from a Northwestern University roundup of Biden’s climate science team jumps out: Some scientists have reservations about the new team, particularly about the need to stress climate reform.
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January 22, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
In his first day as president, Joe Biden had something for almost everyone in his far-left coalition. For the climate alarmists, he signed an executive order revoking the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. For the radical LGBT crowd, he signed an executive order that I read as calling on schools across the country to allow transgender athletes to participate in the sport of their gender identity. (It says, “Children
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January 18, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Word is out today that Joe Biden plans to cancel the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline on Day One in office. Leaving aside potential legal difficulties (I can imagine that, depending on the exact status of the permit, Trans-Canada may have a strong case for damages before the U.S. Federal Court of Claims), this is pure symbolism, as it will not reduce the amount of oil consumed in the
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January 12, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Big Tech censorship is the issue of the day, and it isn’t just President Trump and other conservative leaders whose speech is being suppressed. The heavy hand of censorship has also come down on discussion of the highly-controversial theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. A party line has been pronounced, and you deviate from it at your peril, regardless of the scientific evidence, which strongly supports the skeptical view. My
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December 29, 2020 — Steven Hayward
It has been widely noted that many of our government leaders seem to like the air of crisis and the exertion of emergency power that the COVID pandemic has enabled. And there has been open support among the climatistas applying the kinds of strictures used to battle COVID to climate change as well. The superficiality of this parallel will be lost on lots of people—after all, how well are the
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November 24, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Joe Biden has selected John Kerry — old foghorn himself — to be “climate czar”, as some accounts label the job, or “climate envoy”, as other accounts call it. I don’t think the climate will heed a czar. I’m not sure it will even accept an envoy. However, the actual job is perfect for Kerry at one level. As Kevin Williamson says, naming Kerry as the climate envoy is “a
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