If This Surprises You, Raise Your Hand

From euronews.green:

The richest 10 per cent of US households are responsible for 40 per cent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, a new study reveals.

Rather than focusing on consumption - such as transport, food or energy use - the study looked at emissions linked to people’s income.

They found that wealthy US households reap the biggest benefit from emissions while being most responsible for them.

The study's authors argue that an income based carbon tax - particularly on investments - could help reduce climate inequality and fund much needed decarbonisation measures.

They were doing fine until that last sentence.

He Gave Them A Booboo On Their Heart

Sometimes the truth hurts, no matter the feeeeelz:

Three students from David Solomon's alma mater, Hamilton College, have taken aim at the Goldman Sachs CEO after he allegedly referred to the movement to divest in fossil fuel as "stupid"...

Solomon's comments, according to the letter, came during a "Senior Networking with Trustees" event that he took part in at the college in March, when the students challenged him about divestment from fossil fuels.

Solomon, the letter stated at the time, was speaking to "a group of six or so people" who "were all non-male, and at least half were people of color."

Back in the day, the correctness of a comment didn't depend on the sex or skin color of the people being spoken to. 

The executive's comments, according to the students, were in a "patronizing and disrespectful manner" and came from a "position of power."

Gawd, the whining.  It's too much to bear sometimes. 

When it came to fossil fuel divestment, the students claimed Solomon told them that it was a "stupid movement" and suggested that they should live in other regions in the world to see how things "really work."

"He also claimed he did not know what we were talking about in reference to ‘legacy private investments.’ Solomon then indicated that he thought [fossil] fuel divestment was a stupid movement. He called us hypocritical for advocating for divestment when we still use electricity and drive cars — and said that if we traveled to countries like China, India, and Cambodia we would see how the world 'really works,' and then see if we want to live like that," the students claimed.

I agree with him. 

I'm reminded of this quote from Governor Reagan in response to rioting in Berkeley, CA, in the late 60s:

All of it began the first time some of you who know better, and are old enough to know better, let young people think that they had the right to choose the laws they would obey as long as they were doing it in the name of social protest.

Maybe it's time to return to in loco parentis, because too many of these kids are out of control.

Nuclear Power

Sweden is moving in the right direction:

Sweden's parliament on Tuesday adopted a new energy target, giving the right-wing government the green light to push forward with plans to build new nuclear plants in a country that voted 40 years ago to phase out atomic power.

Changing the target to "100% fossil-free" electricity, from "100% renewable" is key to the government's plan to meet an expected doubling of electricity demand to around 300 TwH by 2040 and reach net zero emissions by 2045.

"This creates the conditions for nuclear power," Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson said in parliament. "We need more electricity production, we need clean electricity and we need a stable energy system."

Anyone who claims to be an "environmentalist" but doesn't support nuclear power is just a poser.  Even Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, supports nuclear energy.

They Lie, And Pat Themselves On The Back For Their Creativity

Do lefties "exaggerate", or do they just lie through their teeth?

Remember the old children’s story about Chicken Little? An acorn falls on Chicken Little’s head, and she surmises that “the sky is falling” and the world is coming to an end. As a result, Chicken Little creates mass hysteria among the barnyard animals.

Chicken Little whipped the other animals into a frenzy with her histrionics, which makes her the perfect metaphor for today’s leftists...

Democrats act as if every Republican proposal is an existential threat to life in one way or another. Fossil fuels will destroy the planet. Efforts to secure elections will prevent minorities from voting. Measures to keep young children from irreversibly damaging their bodies amount to erasing transgender people. You get the picture.

The Biden administration has turned progressive melodrama into an art form. We’re talking about the people who compare anyone who didn’t vote for Joe Biden to violent extremists and who promised a “winter of severe illness and death” to anyone who didn’t get the COVID-19 vaccine.

A Wall Street Journal editorial by Barton Swaim demonstrates how bad the left has gotten when it comes to histrionics.

“President Biden’s re-election announcement video warned that ‘MAGA extremists are lining up’ to repeal ‘bedrock freedoms,'” Swaim begins. “Uh oh—what freedoms? The extremists plan on ‘dictating what healthcare decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love, all by making it more difficult for you to be able to vote' "...

“The other threats on Mr. Biden’s list—’banning’ books, ‘telling people who they can love’ and voter suppression—are literally nonexistent,” Swaim points out. “Mr. Biden isn’t engaged in the time-honored political craft of exaggeration. He’s seeing things that aren’t there.”

I'm going with "lying to sway the low-information voter", of which there are unfortunately too many.  Remember the blatant lie Harry Reid told about Mitt Romney?  "Romney didn't win, did he" was Reid's reply when called out, so the ends justified the means.  It always does for lefties.

The Last Day of Humanity

It's the end of the world as we know it...

 

link--click pic to enlarge

...and I feel fine.

The Left Has Mastered Hypocrisy

link

Global Warming

Warming is happening.  I don't believe man (man-made emissions) is the cause, though:

link

There's also this:

Organic Waste Recycling

About a year ago I wrote this post about mandatory organic waste recycling, at the end of which I asked the question, "Does any of this produce environmentally meaningful results, or is this just a way to generate more money for governments and certain businesses?  I'd really like to know."

I think I now have an answer:

California’s ambitious and expensive plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from landfills may itself be headed for the trash heap.

A state oversight panel is recommending that California pause implementation of Senate Bill 1383, which requires cities and counties to offer organic waste recycling , because it is riddled with problems and falling short of its goals, according to a draft report provided to KTLA.

The law set benchmarks for reducing the amount of organic waste sent to landfills by 50% by 2020 and 75% by 2025, using 2014 as a baseline.

Instead, only about half of local governments are participating in the program and the amount of organic waste in landfills has actually increased in recent years, the Little Hoover Commission said in the draft...

Among the many hurdles to SB 1383’s success are cost and infrastructure, the report says.

For example, a $100 million anaerobic digester in Perris, California, took six years to permit and construct. The demands placed on rural communities, which produce very little organic waste compared to heavily populated areas, were not considered, commissioners said. 

Kabuki theater.

Import/Export

California already imports a significant amount of its energy and exports a significant amount of its waste and pollution, but how long can it remain solvent when it exports its jobs?

If there is a similar list of companies that have packed up and moved to California, I'd genuinely like to see it.

Update, 5/31/23:  Here's another one.

Well, There Goes My Retirement

As long as the crazy lefties in California pay for the retirement they've promised me, I guess I shouldn't care what silliness they do--but they won't be able to pay me if they keep up silliness like this:

The California State Senate has passed legislation that would require the state’s two powerful public employee pension funds to stop investing in fossil fuel companies. It would also force them to liquidate close to $15 billion in holdings to aid the nation’s transition to clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas production.

The bill, SB 252, would prohibit the California Public Employees' Retirement System, or CalPERS, and the California State Teachers' Retirement System, or CalSTRS, from making or renewing investments in the 200 largest publicly traded fossil fuel companies beginning Jan. 1.

By July 1, 2031, both funds would have to liquidate investments in those 200 companies, which are defined by the carbon content in their proven oil, gas and coal reserves. Because of underground reserves, companies on the list of 200 are deemed to have the most potential for future emissions if enabled by investment capital.

The bill next must be approved by the state Assembly and then signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Supporters say they are confident both will happen.

How Dare You.

Grumpy Greta explains hyperbole as "metaphor" and admits there's no scientific study she read to justify her claims.  Just sayin'.

Earth Day

I don't understand those who revel in apocalypse porn, and I wouldn't care if their crazy beliefs didn't impact me.  Apparently, though, even Earth Day isn't enough for some of those kooks:

Even the left finds the day more than a little glum just now though that’s because the world hasn’t ended yet. Remember—end-of-the-world doomsday scenarios make environmentalists happy, so when the end of the world fails to arrive on schedule, they get the sads.

Their predictions have been almost 100% wrong for 50 years now, and that doesn't seem to deter them.

I'm a conservationist.

They Came So Close

Interesting article on CNN about why the Vikings might have abandoned their Greenland settlements:

The Vikings disappeared abruptly from Greenland in the mid-15th century, some 400 years after arriving there. Why they abandoned a successful settlement is a mystery that historians never have been able to fully explain.

Theories include drought, changing temperatures, social unrest, and the overhunting of walrus tusks (a cherished luxury good in medieval Europe) — conditions that would have made Norse colonies in Greenland economically nonviable.

Now, a team of researchers from Harvard University and Pennsylvania State University say they have uncovered another key factor that could explain why the Vikings fled: a rise in sea levels.

Using a computer model based on geological and climate records, the team found that sea levels would have risen by up to 3 meters (9.8 feet) during the the four centuries of Norse occupation of the eastern settlement Vikings established in Greenland in 985 AD. 

The researchers calculated that 204 square kilometers (79 square miles) of land would have been been flooded during the period the settlement was occupied, making Norse communities more vulnerable to storms and coastal erosion as they also lost fertile lowland.

The loss of habitable land would have been compounded by a trend from warmer temperatures toward cooler, drier temperatures in Europe that ultimately led to what is known as the Little Ice Age, which began around 1250 AD. A study detailing the findings published Monday in the scientific journal PNAS. 

So in this article they acknowledge the Little Ice Age and changing sea level changes well before the advent of SUVs but they just can't or won't pull it all together.  Swing and a miss.

It's Hard To Feel Sorry For These Students

They choose to pay for crap like this--don't they vote on it?  Or does their student government make such decisions unilaterally?

A “green initiative” at the University of California Los Angeles continues to stockpile student fee funds ostensibly intended to make improvements to the campus environment.

However, even when the money is spent, it goes to projects with questionable “sustainability” benefits, such as “cultural graduation ceremonies"...

“Student fees collected by TGIF (The Green Initiative Fund) have been used to help fund [student government’s] iClicker rental program, biodegradable diningware for volunteer dinners, a vegan cookbook promotional event, the creation of poetry booklets, and multiple student music festivals and fashion shows,” the paper reported.

“I am not saying music festivals and fashion events should not be funded, but those would not be the first things that come to mind for the Green Fund,” Professor Deepak Rajagopal, an academic at the university’s Institute of the Environment told the student newspaper.

Meanwhile, a Bruin analysis from 2022 concluded that UCLA was set to miss its carbon neutrality goal by 43 years, though a campus official denied the paper’s claim.

If these college students still can't figure out the grift and graft in their own little microcosm of the so-called green movement, they aren't smart enough to be in college.

"Designated Experts" on "Climate Crisis" Proven Wrong Again

If I made such extreme "predictions", and were wrong 100% of the time, no one would listen to a word I say.  But people like Grumpy Greta can be wrong all day long, day in and day out, and the media would still grant them credibility.  This a a serious problem with the press.

Who Could've Known?

It's funny how I see these types of stories more and more often, as if the results weren't predictable (or predicted):

The battle against the single-use plastic bag may not be won but it's definitely under way.

Restrictions on their use are in place in almost a dozen US states and in many other countries around the world. And in many cases, these efforts have been successful at eliminating new sales of thin, wispy plastic bags that float up into trees, clog waterways, leech microplastics into soil and water and harm marine life. (Of course, these restrictions don't address the plastic bags already out there that will take centuries to decompose.)

But this environmental success story of sorts masks another problem.

Many of us are drowning in reusable bags - cloth totes or thicker, more durable plastic bags - that retailers sell cheaply or give away to customers as an ostensibly greener alternative to single-use plastic.

Campaigners say these bag hoards are creating fresh environmental problems, with reusable bags having a much higher carbon footprint than thin plastic bags. According to one eye-popping estimate, a cotton bag should be used at least 7,100 times to make it a truly environmentally friendly alternative to a conventional plastic bag.

The answer to what's the greenest replacement for a single-use plastic bag isn't straightforward, but the advice boils down to this: Reuse whatever bags you have at home, as many times as you can. 

Their intentions were good, that's all that matters.  The results shouldn't matter.  Being a leftie never means having to say you're wrong.

Will The Swedish Scold Learn From This?

Adherents of the Church of Global Warming are no different from the kooks who predict Christ's return on such-and-such a date:

Being the international spokesperson for a fake crisis can be tough, as the child actor who acts as the mouthpiece for the climate change industry has just been reminded. On Saturday, Human Events senior editor Jack Posobiec tweeted at pint-sized climate scold Greta Thunberg, “Hi @GretaThunberg! Why did you delete this?” The deleted tweet in question had Greta quoting this: “A climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.” The date on Greta’s tweet? June 21, 2018. Either we have just over three months to live, or Greta’s tweet was juuuuust a trifle hysterical. Her deletion of the tweet suggests that even Greta knows that the sun is likely to rise on June 22, 2023.
How many times do they have to be wrong before they figure out their religion is bunk?  Being wrong so often would deter normal people.  These are not normal people.

My guess is that if Grumpy Greta learned anything from this, it's that you either don't put a firm date on your climate predictions, or else you put a date much farther into the future.  Let's see how she performs next time.

Oh, and we'll also see if she goes to China.  Just sayin'. 

What Is Your Position On The Church of Global Warming?

You know my position:

Adherents of the Church of Global Warming

click to enlarge

Recycling

As a conservationist, I like the idea of recycling; why waste something?  Unfortunately, as even National Geographic points out, the fantasy of recycling often conflicts with the reality:

A plastic bag, a dirty pizza box, plastic utensils, paper napkins, and a soda can—a single takeout meal can feel like a game of recycling trivia. 

Which items can be recycled? What kinds of plastic go in the trash? What if the container is greasy? 

Recycling can be complicated, and the rules outlining how to do it vary from city to city, which might be one reason why only about 32 percent of our trash gets recycled.  

Only about six percent of the plastic—everything from plastic bottles to IV drips—produced in the U.S. in 2021 was recycled, according to a Greenpeace report. Some plastic items are designed in ways that make them difficult to recycle or recyclers struggle to find people who want to buy recycled material. 

Once China stopped accepting our recyclable trash, the heyday of recycling was over.