Tag: climate change

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Common Sense national politics & policies regulation subsidy

Electric Class Warfare

Star Trek, electric car, gas car, regulations, climate

Star Trek may have adversely affected American politics. Its techno-communist utopian militarism was one thing, its attitude towards engineering? Perhaps worse.

In how many episodes did Captain Kirk demand that Scotty push the warp drives further, or decrease the time required for a task — arbitrarily according to his need, not actual possibility?

And, because television: presto, it was done; just in time for the finale!

We see that in the push for electric vehicles (EVs). 

The EV mandates, explains The Epoch Times, “will likely cause a sizable wealth transfer from rural red regions of the United States to urban blue sections, and to wealthy Democrats who reside in them. . . .”

For while Democrats say they’re trying to “save the planet” from an increase in atmospheric carbon, really, analyst Robert Bryce counters, “it’s a type of class warfare that will prevent low- and middle-income consumers from being able to afford new cars.”

How? The EPA’s new “rules are the strictest in history and will effectively force carmakers to have one-third of new car sales be plug-in EVs by 2027 and more than two-thirds by 2032.” But according to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, “as much as $48,000 of the cost of the average EV sold in the United States is paid not by the owner but in the form of ‘socialized costs’ that are spread out among taxpayers and electricity consumers over a 10-year period.”

So the new rules will reduce the supply of gas-powered vehicles, driving up costs. And the increased number of already-subsidized vehicles will also be paid by taxpayers at large, while the benefits go to . . . mostly Democrats in the bluest counties of the bluest states, as statistics show.

In recent years, Democrats have prided themselves that their “blue states” subsidize “red states,” mocking the “rugged individualist” pretensions of the hapless bubbas in flyover country. But now such boasts ring hollow. 

This is the far-flung future? 

Subsidy and regulation spoil the Star Trek promise.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly too much government

Ban These Energy Bans

Colorado, Climate, energy, oil, drilling

Several bills pending in the Colorado legislature target the state’s oil industry.

State Senator Kevin Priola, responsible for two of the bills, says he’s acting to stop climate change. To prevent the mass extinction of species, he claims.

One of his proposed statutes would outlaw new oil wells in Colorado after 2030. Another bill would, among other things, outlaw fracking from May through September unless drillers use special hard-to-get electric equipment. The same bill would also direct an agency to reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled.

Another lawmaker’s bill would make it harder to produce new wells.

Priola explains that since 50,000 wells already operate in Colorado, his legislation would not much impair production. But Dan Haley, president of Colorado Oil & Gas Association, observes that the highest production of oil wells comes in their first 18 months. Within two years of the 2030 ban, then, the state’s oil industry would sharply decline.

We’re seeing this more and more. Bans and plans to ban gas-powered lawn mowers, gas-powered cars, gas, coal, oil. Lawmakers working to shut down civilization. Not all at once, but via ever faster and bigger Interim Steps.

Don’t they see that they too will be harmed when things are no longer permitted to function? Do they imagine that if they achieve all their industry-killing dreams, all the food, clothing, shelter, transportation, communication will continue just as smoothly and abundantly as ever?

Don’t they think about the day after tomorrow?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies regulation

Children’s Crusade Goes Forth

climate panic

In 2015, a group of young people sued the federal government.

The government’s allegedly actionable dereliction was having “known for decades that carbon dioxide pollution was causing catastrophic climate change . . . and a nation-wide transition away from fossil fuels was needed to protect plaintiff’s constitutional rights.”

The government “recklessly allowed” transport of fossil fuels, combustion of fossil fuels, etc.

I blame the lawyers more than the kids for the filing’s falsehoods and non sequiturs. Outlawing fossil fuels would be the actual catastrophe and actual reckless violation of individual and constitutional rights.

Climate variations are nothing new in the earth’s four-billion-year history. We should expect to see all the usual dry spells, hurricanes, and tornadoes that have buffeted human beings since we emerged as human beings. Fossil fuels help us to protect ourselves from these things.

Government cannot outlaw fossil fuels slowly or quickly without in effect putting a gun to the heads of everyone who wants to use a gas-fueled car, bulldozer, or airplane and saying, “You have no right to take the actions required for your survival.”

Efforts by several states and the federal government to outlaw various uses of fossil fuels are what deserve lawsuits.

Judge Ann Aiken, who recently had a chance to end this litigation but is illogically allowing it to move forward, has one thing right: “Some may balk at the Court’s approach as errant or unmeasured. . . .”

I balk. It’s errant. And over the top.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Bill Gates Wants to Bury Trees

forestry, fires, global warming, climate change, Bill Gates

The latest plan from one of the world’s most annoying billionaires is to cut down trees and bury them.

It’s part of the “thinning” controversy.

The subject? Forest management. 

In the old days, human beings cleared forests or kept forests and harvested from them (for firewood, fungi, and fauna) on an ongoing basis. And, periodically, nature would swing around and forests would burn — a story as old as the hills, forest fires being part of the natural cycle. 

But when humans use forests for all sorts of things, but most especially harvesting building material (lumber), we have to take some control of the natural cycles. Forest thinning — cutting and removing some trees and leaving the rest — is a key silvicultural practice.

Some environmentalists have objected to this practice on the grounds that Nature Is Good and Sacred, with silviculturalists generally arguing that without thinning, forests become tinder-boxes, ripe for runaway fires in which forests are destroyed, value is lost, and people die.

A recent article in The Epoch Times covers some of this. I am not qualified to adjudicate the ecological disagreements. But Bill Gates pushing the thinning of forests not as a means of harvesting lumber or as a means of reducing forest fires, but as a way of sequestering carbon, seems loopy: “Through his foundation Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Mr. Gates is a part of the $6.6 million seed investor pool backing Kodama Systems in its proposal to remove trees in California’s fire-challenged woodlands and bury them in Nevada to sequester carbon dioxide (CO2).”

I would prefer sequestering that carbon in housing, which we need more of, not less.

But Gates has his eyes on atmospheric CO2 levels, not helping the poor in America.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The California Experiment

safety first, California, socialism, globalism, global warming, climate change, control

California is determined to give us the full bleak picture of totalitarianism, American-style.

Anticipating proposed SEC regulations, Newsom’s California is set to impose nonsensical mandates for reporting greenhouse gas emissions and “climate-related financial risk” that target companies with annual revenue of $1 billion or more (according to the terms of SB253) and $500 million or more (SB261).

Billion-dollar businesses will have to report all direct and indirect emissions, including emissions produced throughout a business’s supply chain. Business travel. Employee commutes. Penalties for failure to report could be as high as $500,000.

The cost is in time, money, privacy, freedom, with no benefits except to bureaucrats and politicians who enjoy bossing us around and destroying our ability to function.

These requirements are tyrannical in the same way they’d be tyrannical if required of you and me as individuals. 

Do you know all about the emissions produced in delivering the water, electricity, electronics, gas, paper you use each month? 

Care to drop everything you’re doing to find out? 

And submit the data in a bureaucrat-satisfying format?

We already know what the results of California’s experiment will be. We already know that crushing freedom and giving unfettered power to slave-masters is not the road to wealth and happiness.

What we don’t know is exactly how far the Tarnished State’s aspiring totalitarians will go. But whatever the consequences, they’ll blame others . . . or just mutter “Good riddance, we didn’t want that prosperity and those evil businesses anyway.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

Bashing Climate Change

Vivek, climate change, global warming, debate

“[T]he climate change agenda and the policies are killing more people than climate change,” Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy informed CNN’s Dana Bash yesterday. “That’s the reality.”

He explained: “The climate-related death rate — tornadoes, hurricanes, heat waves — it is down by 98 percent over the last century. For every 100 people who died of a climate-related disaster in 1920, two die today. And the reason why is more abundant and plentiful access and use of fossil fuels.”

Attacking the “anti-fossil fuel agenda,” Ramaswamy added, “Eight times as many people today are dying of cold temperatures, rather than warm ones. And the right answer to all temperature-related deaths is more plentiful access to fossil fuels.”

Her head having exploded, Bash responded by actually telling Vivek: “As you know, it’s not about people dying today. It’s about what is going to happen in the short term and long term.”

“Oh,” replied Mr. Ramaswamy, “I think it’s all about people dying today.”

Today does certainly come before both short term and long term.

“If you don’t want to cut fossil fuels,” Bash inquired, “what would your policies be to slow things like droughts, like flooding and other damage to our planet?”

“I think we should focus on adaptation and mastery of any change in the climate,” offered the candidate, “through technological advances powered by fossil fuels and other forms of energy.”

Celebrities, politicians and diplomats jetting off to international junkets where they jawbone over unenforceable agreements to cut carbon emissions may impress CNN talking heads. But will Vivek Ramaswamy’s more practical alternative convince voters?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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folly media and media people public opinion

Volcano Denialism

science, global warming, climate change, volcano, weather

Some weather we’ve been having, eh? Record-setting heat in many locales. 

It must be global warming!

Well, it is hotter than usual. 

But this is summer.

And a volcano did blow in the ocean near Tonga, a year and a half ago, and scientists at the time did say that the water vapor it placed into the stratosphere could linger for years, affecting the climate.

Still, you won’t see recognition of this factor for warming on the major news sources. They keep pushing the AGW line: anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming: “climate change.”

Matt Walsh, on his podcast, ran through the vulcanism story last week. Water vapor is a more effective, broad-spectrum greenhouse gas than CO2, which all the journos cannot help but push (because it fits a statist agenda, and that’s their real business: propaganda).

Walsh calls mainstream AGW crusaders “volcano denialists.”

Our planet’s ecosystem is ultra-complicated. Cloud cover (which has something to do with water vapor, you might say) can also cool the planet by increasing high-altitude albedo, a point touched upon in The Epoch Times, “Nobel Winner on Climate Agenda: ‘We Are Totally Awash in Pseudoscience,” which focuses on physicist John Clausner and his contrarian views on climate.

“Contra the IPCC and other major institutions,” Clausner contends “that climate is primarily set by . . . the ‘cloud cover thermostat,’ a self-regulating process whereby more clouds start to enshroud the Earth when the temperature is too high and vice-versa.”

He was slated to give a talk to the International Monetary Fund on July 25, but that was cancelled. These elites have directed trillions of global dollars to “research” global climate, and Clausner’s caution that they’ve made “a trillion-dollar mistake” is not exactly welcome.

It’s not just vulcanism they deny. They deny water.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Slow Murder Is Still Murder

weather, climate change, government, power

Electricity providers must not beg the government to destroy them more slowly. 

“I’m not saying now’s the time to double down” on fossil fuels, pleads Lanny Nickel, chief operating officer of Southwest Power Pool, which helps provide electricity to 14 states. “I’m just saying now’s the time to slow down on the removal of [those] assets from our footprint.”

The assets Nickel means are oil, gas, coal.

Like others in the business of keeping the lights on, Nickel knows that if and when the percentage of fossil fuels in the utility industry “footprint” is coercively reduced to point oh one percent or whatever, wind and sunshine will not be taking up the slack. 

We’ll suffer, instead, from lots more brownouts and blackouts.

Nickel understands this. 

But begging regulators and politicians to go slower won’t discourage them. They’ll just gloat about how they’re making the utility executives sweat.

We should in fact be doubling down on fossil fuels, because these are the only always-reliable sources of electricity. 

Should solar and other sources of electricity become cheaper and more reliable, people won’t have to be compelled to increasingly turn to them. The transition would happen naturally, in the normal course of progress. 

And the notion that government will be able to fine-tune global weather if only we are forcibly deprived of our means of coping with the ups and downs of the weather is a willful delusion.

Electricity providers must not beg the government to destroy them more slowly, sure. But more importantly, the government should not be destroying them — and us — in the name of the religion of Climate Change at all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

Survival Requirements

climate change, global warming, energy, EPA

Suppose you have a roof. Now you punch holes in the roof. The next time it rains, do the holes help or hurt? You’ve still got a roof, right? Mostly?

Actually, it’s bad to have holes in your roof. And the more holes you have, the worse it gets.

I elaborate this object lesson not primarily for you and your common-sensical friends, but to those determined to make it ever-harder for us to provide ourselves with food, clothing, and shelter by progressively crippling our means of doing so.

Example? The Environmental Protection Agency is trying to kill uninterrupted generation of power in the United States.

New rules the EPA has proposed would require plants powered by coal or gas to eliminate almost all of their carbon emissions by 2040. The plants would have to shut down or switch to less reliable sources of electricity like the sun (unhelpful when it’s cloudy or post-sunset), wind (unhelpful when there’s no wind), and wishful thinking (never helpful).

Fossil-fueled power plants provide some 60 percent of production of electricity in the country. Jim Matheson, head of National Rural Electric Cooperative Associations, warns that the EPA rules would put the reliability of the power grid at risk.

Yes. Rolling blackouts currently the norm in a few states especially plagued by anti-energy policies would become the norm throughout the country.

Like us, proponents of such policies may already know that deliberately creating shortages of energy is bad. 

Unlike us, though, they may think that others, and not themselves, will bear the brunt of the downpour.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly free trade & free markets too much government

Make Them Pay

California, Commiefornia, socialism, electricity

Thanks to renewable-energy mandates and other regulations, California muddles along with crippled power markets in which rolling blackouts are routine when demand for electricity is high and sun and wind are unavailable.

Apparently, this and other burdens on energy usage in the Brownout State are insufficient to fully immobilize everybody who relies on things that need to function. So the state’s utilities are preparing to also impose socialist billing on its customers.

Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Southern California Edison are proposing that the flat-rate component of power bills be based on income. Once regulators sign off, there is to be an ongoing transfer of wealth from richer to poorer.

The utilities aren’t acting independently. 

They’re obeying a legislative mandate.

In addition to a flat-rate component of utility bills that would be $15 for the poorest customers and $85 for the wealthiest customers, there would still be a component based on power consumption. So the impending looting of nonpoor customers could be worse.

The socialism isn’t full bore yet.

But I doubt that initial limits on this redistribution agenda would remain intact were the scheme implemented and to persist.

In addition to other objections, there is also the matter of how utilities will know their customers’ incomes. Will customers be required to report and prove these incomes? The central planners presumably regard this invasion of privacy as not worth fretting about. 

They’re too busy creating perfect equality . . . of brownouts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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