Tag: climate

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general freedom international affairs

Denial Is a River in Argentina?

“In the history of the Earth, there is a cycle of temperatures,” said Javier Milei during a presidential debate in 2023. “We are not going to adhere to the 2030 Agenda [a United Nations list of dozens of goals for curtailing countries’ use of resources]. We do not adhere to cultural Marxism. We do not adhere to decadence.”

Now Argentina’s President Milei is acting to formally withdraw from accords requiring countries to become poorer in order to “save the planet,” etc.

Although Milei has axed many government departments, his government still has a chief environmental officer. This personage had been leading the Argentine delegation attending the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, happening November 11 – 22, 2024. But Argentina had told the delegation not to participate.

Now Milei has pulled them from the summit. Why? That was not immediately announced. But “Milei has consistently denied the existence of a climate crisis,” moans the Buenos Aires Herald.

Denialist Milei doubtless recognizes hurricanes, tornadoes, and other incidents of drastic weather. He’d probably add, though, that planet earth has seen plenty of crisis-​level weather before carbon-​emitting industry arrived to take the blame.

Milei’s decision to exit COP29 came a day after his meeting with President-​elect Donald Trump, of like mind on environmental and other questions.

Trump is expected to re-​withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Paris agreement, another anti-​industrial environmental accord. We don’t know yet whether Argentina will also withdraw. 

But if you’re betting Yes, I like your chances.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets regulation tax policy

Destroying Dane Farming

Europe, climate, global warming, cows, bureaucrats

In February, Denmark’s farmers were worried “that plans to levy a carbon emission tax on farming” in the name of global weather control “would force them to reduce production and close farms.”

In the same month, farmers across Europe protested against assaults on their livelihood.

Meanwhile, a report by a government commission concluded that the carbon tax could cause Denmark’s agricultural production to decline by as much as a fifth. The central planners made clear that this was a price they were willing to pay in order to indulge their ideological-​meteorological fantasy.

And also, not incidentally, in order to collect more tax dollars.

But the concern and the estimates of the severity of the blow on farmers — to be penalized for providing food, a requirement of survival — availed naught.

The carbon emissions tax is being enacted and will take effect in 2030. The levy will initially be something like $96 per cow, rising to $241 per cow in 2035.

Insane. But cows produce methane “through their burps and manure,” CNN reports. So what can tyrants do but tax farmers into oblivion?

The fantasists may claim success no matter what global climate turns out to be in years to come. Or they may claim that their measures haven’t yet fixed the global climate only because the rest of the world’s countries haven’t yet followed suit and appropriately penalized their farmers for farming.

Only when civilization is fully destroyed will we be able “save” it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly too much government

Downshifting Before the Cliff

climate, global warming, energy, government

A scenario: You and millions of others are willy-​nilly running toward a cliff.

You don’t want to go over the cliff; like Bartleby, you would prefer not to. But you’re caught in the surging mass. Enough of the stampeders think that it’s the greatest idea ever — long overdue, in fact.

But just as you’re coming within sight of the cliff, the Great Leader leading the charge raises his hand and asks to be heard.

“We have decided that we are running too fast toward the cliff. We need more time to make the transition. We will therefore reduce the speed of our blind hurtling toward the cliff by 11 percent.”

Fiction? No.

The above summarizes the amended policy of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vis-​à-​vis how quickly policymakers will shove Britain’s industrial society over the proverbial cliff in the name of pretending to fine-​tune global climate. Various bans on various things that people need in order to function will reportedly be slightly delayed so that people have more time to … pretend … to prepare.

It won’t become illegal to sell petrol (gas) and diesel vehicles so that buyers of new cars would be stuck with more expensive and impractical battery-​powered cars until 2035. 

Not 2030 as previously stated.

Instead of 100 percent of gas boilers being phased out by 2035, the new goal is 80 percent.

Off-​grid oil burners will now be banned in 2035, not 2026.

Other slight delays of annihilative mandates are also in the works.

British people, enjoy your five-​year and nine-​year reprieves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly general freedom international affairs

Austerity Theater

climate, elites, warming, ecology

Does Spain really need a Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge?

Well, the country’s reproduction rate has fallen dramatically, with the demographics heading into a tailspin. This is what decadence really means. So maybe, just maybe, the government should look into it.

But does Spain really need Teresa Ribera?

She’s the minister in charge of MITECO, the department in question. She hit international notoriety last week when video of her riding a bicycle to an EU “climate summit” proved to be something other than a valiant commitment to climate-​crisis austerity.

While she intended her cycling to hit the news cycle, how it hit proved … hilarious. 

She had arrived at the summit via jet — and not a commercial airliner — and then was transported by limo to a spot a hundred meters from the event, stopping to get on her bicycle and pedaling the last bit.

For the show.

Why she thought she’d get away with what Pete Buttigieg had failed at in 2021, as The Daily Wire noted, I don’t know. Maybe our leaders think we’re that stupid. Or perhaps they haven’t completely transitioned to the Age of the iPhone and Internet Challenge.

We must wonder: Do our leaders really believe their own climate prophecies? 

They don’t seem to, any more than they believed, in the thick of the pandemic, that masking up and social distancing was something that they, too, should do.

That could be one take-​away. But another is that they do, but they know that climate austerity, like the lockdowns, make sense only if most people comply. They are not “most people.” They are special. 

For them, the elites, austerity is just a show. 

To set us up to suffer — for real.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies

End in Ice?

ice, frozen, energy

When I was young, some folks worried about a return to Ice Age conditions. The climate alarm, in the decades since, prophesies hotter conditions, not colder.

So, with this cold snap hitting North America — ice storms from Washington State to Texas and now heading east by northeast — climate change has emerged in the back (or even front) of our minds.

It’s just not necessarily Fire we fret about. It’s Ice. (Cue recitation of the great Robert Frost poem, now.)

“The arctic air that poured into Texas resulted in a record-​breaking demand for power that caused the state’s electric grid to fail,” the Weather Channel reports. “Suppliers had planned to use rolling blackouts, but the system was overwhelmed” — effecting an “estimated 75% of Texas power generation capacity.”

Millions in Mexico are also without power, because natural gas pipelines from Texas froze.

The main hit to the electric grid sure looks like it has been directly* to the distribution — if what I glean from Georgetown’s electric outage page is a good indication.

But that town went heavy into alternative forms of energy production (as has the whole of the state, along with many others). Did that investment help them when the cold came? Former Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette says the problem is that alternative energy sources are not “base load electricity” but “intermittant and sometimes unreliable.”

Just as batteries under-​perform in the cold, windmills don’t turn well when covered in ice. When we really need power, energy production that flakes out is not an energy alternative at all — it’s non-energy.

And if an Ice Age does come back, we’ll need more energy, not less than were global warming to remain the trend.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The reason there was no weekend podcast from me is that my partner in podcasting was without power simply because an ice storm brought down trees on multiple power lines in his area.

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ideological culture

Mad Prophetess?

GretaThurnberg

The latest scandal of the How Dare You Say That!?! variety features The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles, who is banned from Fox News, we learn, because he characterized the celebrated “climate activist” Greta Thunberg as “mentally ill.”

He said it while serving as one of those invited talking heads. The other guest immediately cried “how dare you?” 

And censoriousness ensued, with high moral dudgeon and nasty put-​downs and the whole shebang.

While I don’t really know much about Miss Thunberg’s mental health going into all this, I do not believe it can be much improved by playing Prophetess on the world stage. 

Which also gives too much cultural power to someone so young. And since power corrupts … that’s not good for Greta, and it makes her promoters corruptors.

And that is the point Mr. Knowles appeared to be trying to make. Reasonable people can disagree on the propriety of how “the execrable Michael Knowles” (as his fellow Daily Wire colleagues jovially refer to him) referred to the Swedish prophetess, of course. But it nevertheless remains rather shocking to witness 

  1. activist adults abuse 
  2. one child to 
  3. scare millions of children to 
  4. pressure powerful adults to 
  5. engage in precipitous policy action.

“Adults sometimes like to use children to carry their messages,” vidcaster and Dilbert creator Scott Adams points out, “because it makes it hard for the other side to criticize them without seeming like monsters.”

How can we “listen to the scientists,” as Miss Thunberg recently implored, if the talking is being done by a young teenage non-scientist?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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GretaThurnberg

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