Another week, another Biden cabinet member doing something infuriating in the name of the climate. Plus, intersectionality bingo and indecisive time bandits.
At this point, cabinet members doing infuriating things in the name of the climate are a feature of the administration, not a bug. Plus, we have more intersectionality bingo, as the LGBTQ+ community faces down more impacts from climate than straight people. Time can’t decide if it’s coming or going, and electric vehicles (EVs) can’t decide if they’re imploding or exploding. If you weren’t mad enough already that Ford destroyed the Mustang, wait ‘til you get a load of this week’s anecdote.
Finally, we actually have several bits of good climate news, indicating even though the hysterics continue to get more wild-eyed, if we cast our gaze in the proper direction, we can find rays of hope for a sane outcome.
Can the Climate Narrative Please Keep Its Story Straight?
A couple of weeks ago, we covered the insane idea that climate change would slow down time. Believe it or not, we didn’t adequately document all the insanity. According to NotTheBee.com, two competing stories were published on the same day. NBC reported melting polar ice would make Earth’s rotation slow down, while CBS reported the rotation had sped up. The only conclusion? Clearly a glitch in the matrix.
Wait, That’s Not Straight
A scholarly paper published this week purportedly demonstrates climate change disproportionately affects gay people. A research data analyst and a senior fellow for the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law analyzed census data, along with NASA and FEMA “climate risk assessment data,” and came to some startling conclusions:
Executive Summary
Climate change represents a global challenge, but it also exacerbates existing disparities among individuals and communities. LGBT people face discrimination and exclusion, creating unique vulnerabilities that compound and heighten their exposure to climate-related harms. This report provides some of the first empirical documentation as to how LGBT people differentially experience the negative effects of climate change compared to non-LGBT people. Using U.S. Census data and climate risk assessment data from NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), we conducted a geographic analysis to assess the climate risk impacting same-sex couples.
So many leaps, so many conclusions, so much correlation without causation. Those conclusions include LGBT people living more often in coastal communities, and also facing more discrimination than their straight counterparts. Which seems unlikely in coastal communities in 2024 America. Notably, the media ran with this, despite it not making it into a peer-reviewed academic journal. Not that peer-review has a stellar reputation these days, but the authors published this study on the Williams Institute website only.
In a Reversal This Week—EVs Implode Instead of Exploding
This week, The Telegraph published a story reporting that the sale of Electric Vehicles (EVs) have stalled or are falling in a number of European countries.
Whereas the EU and member governments cannot wait to abolish petrol and diesel cars (and indeed private transport, if one looks closely), many Europeans are choosing not to just make the full jump from fossil fuel-powered to battery-powered mobility.
The Telegraph’s graphic is quite compelling.
image 3
Don’t worry, though, we still saw plenty of explosions in the EV market this week too. At least explosions in the price tag. The Daily Signal reported a peer-reviewed study showing the . . . erm . . . explosive costs of California’s EV agenda, which will require enormously expensive upgrades to its electrical grid. Not to be outdone, Washington has announced it will start offering refunds to low-income residents who buy or lease EVs. Evidently, they think a $5,000 rebate will be sufficient incentive for someone making $45,000 or less to buy or lease an EV, with the lowest price models currently starting around $30k.
Bonus EV Story—Real World Anecdote
So I got this friend, see, and she does a lot of traveling. Recently she was at the Oakland, CA airport and rented a car. She related what happened next in a Facebook post (republished with permission):
My SUV wasn’t ready at Budget RentACar at the Oakland, CA airport last Thursday, so they offered an all electric Mustang Mach E “at no additional charge.” They saw SUCKER written on my forehead and they weren’t wrong.
Not only did they give zero instruction on the rolling computer with counter intuitive features, like one peddle driving, it wasn’t fully charged. When I asked the lot attendant he said “no problem, 82% is plenty and there are charging stations everywhere.”
I like learning new things…how bad can it be? First, it drove nicely, smooth, was powerful, I was doing 75 on the freeway easily. But when using Nav if I took a phone call and had to restart the Nav…rookie mistake, or something.
I spent time on YouTube trying to figure it out. I saw a charging station at the gas station near my hotel, so I figured I’d be OK. Two days before leaving I checked out that gas station charger. I had driven 126 miles and gone from 82% to 37%. Bummer, their charging station wasn’t compatible with a Ford.
Back to YouTube, it showed a button on the car I could push to tell me where all the charging stations were. They came up several towns away in different directions. BUT I see there is a small Ford Dealer in town! I call, they agree to let me come charge.
As I settled in with a book in the waiting room David comes to tell me it’s going to take five to six hours to get it fully charged…AT THE FORD DEALER. Leon agrees to drive me to my family’s house, nearby.
Almost 5 hours later they call, saying it’s “languishing at 75%” and it could take another 3-4 hours, they are closing, but will leave the car on the charger if I can get a ride back to the dealer. I arrive about 3 hours later, it’s fully charged.
The next morning I drive from Brentwood to the Oakland airport, about 40 miles and it’s down to 81%. SO…no EVs in my future, and I won’t be the sucker who says yes next time.
I suppose the mistakes happened long before she got to the airport, when Ford decided to destroy the Mustang in the first place.
Restoring Balance to the Climate Through More Government
The Department of the Interior under Joe Biden has decided “fossil fuel” drilling, cattle grazing, and other “extractive industries” have too much power. So they created a rule to put conservation on “more equal footing,” on land the federal government owns in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Solving government-created problems with more government:
The Biden administration on Thursday finalized a new rule for public land management that’s meant to put conservation on more equal footing with oil drilling, grazing and other extractive industries on vast government-owned properties.
The rule from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management — which oversees more than 380,000 square miles of land, primarily in the U.S. West — will allow public property to be leased for restoration in the same way that oil companies lease land for drilling.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said the changes would “restore balance” to how the U.S. government manages its public lands. The new rule continues the administration’s efforts to use science to restore habitats and guide “strategic and responsible development,” Haaland said in a statement.
Only a government bureaucrat could come up with something this arcane and pointless.
Finally, some good news:
Physicist Does Physics On His Blog, Demonstrates Basic Carbon Dioxide Facts
Dr. Roy Spencer, the U.S. Science Team leader for NASA who created the satellite temperature monitoring system, says carbon dioxide concentrations will go down naturally, due almost entirely to natural phenomena. In fact, concentrations will continue to decrease at a steady rate even as the concentrations decrease, a counterintuitive fact that he supports with basic math. Read the whole post here—it’s not heavy on the math, but it proves an important point about the natural buffer system in the atmosphere that controls carbon dioxide. Panicking about it is much ado about nothing.
You Mean Taxing Us Into Oblivion Won’t Change the Weather?
Bjorn Lomborg continues to point out better public policies and spending priorities for the climate. While he still believes in the largely debunked theory of man-made climate change, he has spent years pointing out how our public policies do way more harm than good. “Despite us constantly being told that solar and wind are now the cheapest forms of electricity,” Lomborg writes, “governments around the world needed to spend $1.8 trillion on the green transition last year. In fact, a study that shows the real cost of solar is 11-42 times higher than what we’re being told . . . Until innovation will make clean energy cheaper and more reliable, claims that fossil fuels are already outcompeted are just wishful thinking.” In an op-ed for the New York Post, Lomborg insists we should reject the lies about green energy. Bravo!
Is the air in the United States now generally more or less polluted than it was in the 1980s?
Correct Answer Less
Correct Answer Rate80%
Tell Me More
Criteria air pollutants are those that are deemed by the administrator of the EPA to be widespread and to “cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare….” EPA data shows that levels of the various criteria air pollutants have declined 29% to 94% since the 1980s. Likewise, combined emissions of hazardous air pollutants have declined by about 58% since the 1990s. Hazardous air pollutants are those that “present, or may present, through inhalation or other routes of exposure, a threat of adverse human health effects … or adverse environmental effects….” A scientific, nationally representative survey commissioned in 2019 by Just Facts found that 40% of voters falsely believe the air in the United States is now more polluted than it was in the 1980s.
