Don't Cede a Thing to the 'Climate' Scaremongers

Talking to a conservative friend the other day. OK, I admit it. Outside of church, I only have conservative friends. I’ve ditched any others or they’ve ditched me. Can’t do too much about wet Anglican churchgoers, they come with the territory. Anyway, he said, what’s wrong with a bit of warming. Surely that’s a good thing? It is indeed. For a start, many more people die of cold than of heat. But I noted that my friend talked about warming without at all identifying the source of this warming. It could be inferred, and reasonably in context of the current hype, that he was talking about warming generated by man-made CO2. Implicitly ceding part of the premise of climate hysterics.

Another friend ups the ante in ceding the premise. He has disengaged from debating the science and solely focuses on the ineffective and ruinous things being done to combat "climate change." Perforce, this takes the debate to the fashionable idea of using small-scale nuclear power plants, aka small modular reactors (SMRs).

SMRs provide reliable power. As required, they can be linked up. And they can be located close to where power is needed. Marvelous, to be sure; as are motorized wheelchairs for elderly people who have difficulty walking. But such chairs are redundantly expensive if you can, in fact, walk without difficulty. Equally, SMRs are redundantly expensive if coal, oil or natural gas is readily, conveniently, and cheaply available. That’s certainly the case in Australia, as it is the United States and Canada.

SMRs -- it's that simple.

Ergo, SMRS are better than sliced bread if you are in short supply of accessible and affordable hydrocarbons. Otherwise, if the market were to let rip, you’d probably find investors in SMRs going to pastures unendowed with close-by coal, oil, or gas. Unless, that is, man-made CO2 emissions are actually, after all, a serious problem. Then, of course, SMRs come into their own.

At this point, implicitly ceded is not only that a "climate-change" emergency is underway, but that man-made CO2 is the primary cause. Best not to go there. Best not to provide a scintilla of support for a highly tenuous scientific hypothesis primarily promoted on the public stage by assorted oddballs and know-nothings. By honorary doctor of theology Greta Thunberg, by Prince (now King) Charles, by Al Gore, John Kerry, Tim Flannery (worth a mention for predicting in 2007 that Australia's since overflowing dams would never fill again), by the U.N.'s António Guterres, by Leonardo DiCaprio and the Hollywood set, and by public broadcasters and TV weathermen, etc.

It appears to have got hotter since 1850. John Christie and Roy Spencer, scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, reliable skeptics both, compile temperature data sourced from NOAA satellites. Since the beginning of 1979 and the beginning of 2023 (44 years), a trend line through this data shows a rise of 0.6⁰C. The longest running surface data, HADCRUT data from the Met Office Hadley Centre in the U.K., shows a trend rise in temperature from 1850 until the end of 1978 (128 years) of 0.36⁰C. Accepting this data at face value, two things stand out:

First, the global temperature has risen since the end of the Little Ice Age. Second, the rise has become somewhat more acute since around 1980. Industrial CO2 emissions began to rise more sharply from the 1950s onwards; a trend which has continued. Hence the alarmist hypothesis. And if you think there is much more to the hypothesis than imperfect linear correlation and imaginative extrapolation, think again. If there were more to it, the various IPCC predictive models would not produce such wildly divergent outcomes. And so?

And so there is no merit in conceding anything but that the planet has warmed since 1850 and, seemingly, at a somewhat faster rate in more recent decades. And that the measured level of CO2 in the atmosphere has also increased, beneficially greening the planet. Beyond that lies politicized conjecture.

Dan Peña’s metaphorical flourish that man-made CO2 is a “fart in the wind,” might, possibly, be a bridge too far. However, there is no compelling evidence that the increase in CO2, however caused, is the main factor in increasing global temperatures. And even if it were, scientists William Wijngaarden and Will Happer make the solid case that its warming effect progressively peters out; and that from here on its effect will be next to nothing.

A short piece by Professor Richard Lindzen written in 2009, “Resisting Climate Hysteria,” stands the test of time. An excerpt:

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth… The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations... only about a third of the warming is associated with the greenhouse effect, and, quite possibly, not all of even this really small warming is due to man… Climate alarmists [say] that some of the hottest years on record have occurred during the past decade. Given that we are in a relatively warm period, this is not surprising, but it says nothing about trends.

I saw Lindzen interviewed only a few weeks ago. He hasn’t changed his mind. Our minds should be equally resolute. Don’t cede the premise. Man-made CO2 is bringing the planet undone. Really? A revolving door of patently bogus doom-laden predictions is not evidence; except, that is, of the prevalence of scaremongery as an avenue for acquiring ill-gotten loot and power.

WaPo Wonders: Is 'Climate Change' Good?

One of our mantras at The Pipeline has always been "Climate changes. Always has, always will." Which is to say, we've never denied that modern-day weather patterns are different—even significantly different—than those in ages past. In fact, we've written quite a bit about the Roman and Medieval warming periods, as well as the Little Ice Age, of the 16th through 19th centuries. We've looked into the benefits of warming (the expansion of the Roman Empire and the building of the great cathedrals of Europe coincide with the Roman and Medieval warming periods) and even of an elevated concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (which have contributed to record-setting crop yields throughout the world). Which is to say, in general we don't dispute the underlying scientific data, just the questionable conclusions drawn from it.

So it is nice to see the mainstream media acknowledging, however begrudgingly, that we have a point. For instance, the Washington Post recently published an article by Harry Stevens entitled, "Will global warming make temperature less deadly?" The piece begins by mentioning a 2021 study which found that between the years "1991 and 2018... more than one-third of deaths from heat exposure were linked to global warming." Stevens notes that this study received a great deal of attention at the time: "hundreds of news outlets covered the findings." But a follow-up paper got a lot less coverage:

A month later, the same research group... released another peer-reviewed study that told a fuller, more complex story about the link between climate change, temperature, and human mortality. The two papers’ authors were mostly the same, and they used similar data and statistical methods. Published in Lancet Planetary Health, the second paper reported that between 2000 and 2019, annual deaths from heat exposure increased. But deaths from cold exposure, which were far more common, fell by an even larger amount. All told, during those two decades the world warmed by about 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit, and some 650,000 fewer people died from temperature exposure.

While the findings aren't necessarily conclusive—he points to the relatively short time horizon of twenty years—Stevens notes the finding that "on every continent, cold deaths surpassed heat deaths," and finds the authors' conclusion plausible: “The results indicate that global warming might slightly reduce net temperature-related deaths in the short term.” The conclusion itself contains a certain amount of hedging, perhaps because they're concerned about providing aid and comfort to "climate deniers," as they like to call us.

Gaia's just fine, thanks.

Stevens, too, is concerned about the way this result will be interpreted on right-wing Twitter, which is why he pivots to an economic study about the disproportionate impact of global warming on the world's poorest nations. According to that study, "Niger, one of the poorest and hottest countries in the world, is projected to suffer the largest increase in temperature-linked mortality, while cold, wealthy Finland sees the largest decrease."

But this is a non-sequitur. As Hot Air's David Strom points out in his discussion of this study, "Niger is facing this possible future not primarily because it will get a bit hotter, but because it is so poor." (It is also located in Africa instead of near the Barents Sea.) To avert that country's (projected) fate, it makes much more sense to help stabilize its governance and improve its economy than to, say, ban gasoline engines and natural gas heating everywhere else in the world.

Still, a win is a win. The leftists at the Washington Post are willing to grant us that there are some serious benefits to the climate's inevitable changes. This is something for our side to celebrate.

The Noble Lie of 'Global Warming'

The foundation of the environmentalist movement is, essentially, a carrot and a stick. The carrot is a global paradise, with worldwide temperature increases halted at less than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Which is to say, victory for their movement and the human race. The stick is, well, the kind of worldwide devastation for the planet and humanity predicted in David Wallace-Wells' hysterical 2019 book The Uninhabitable Earth. Victory, they might say, for oil barons, car owners, people with more than one child, and anyone else who hates Mother Gaia.

But what if the carrot were to disappear? That is a possibility which Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic's resident climate worry wart (or one of many) has had to come to grips with in the wake of the most recent report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has just  published a piece examining the report's findings entitled "The 1.5-Degree Goal Is All But Dead." Most notable, he says, is that while the I.P.C.C. believes that it is still "technically feasible" for humanity to halt global warming at 1.5 degrees, that goal "is now, in practice, probably impossible to achieve."

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These are chilling words for environmentalists, but Meyer confesses that 1.5 degrees was always an aspiration goal. It might even be worth admitting that it was far-fetched from the outset. Despite being "enshrined in international law" (make of that what you will) via the Paris Climate Agreement, and inspiring an earlier I.P.C.C. report which "detailed the dire famines, droughts, and disasters that would accompany even that level of warming," Meyer explains that "achieving 1.5 degrees has never seemed particularly likely." That's because doing so would require "the world [replacing] its energy system at an unprecedented pace" and to succeed at a project of decarbonization which, he says, borders on the "fantastic, the miraculous." Skeptics have often accused climate change partisans of indulging in magical thinking. Meyer concedes that description is basically accurate.

So even when the original reports predicting disaster if 1.5 degrees were not achieved, the goal was nearly impossible. But human civilization has continued on existing in the years since. Carbon emissions have continued and, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars raised and spent by environmentalist groups, fossil-fuel capacity has continued to grow as well. Says Meyer:

The world can emit as much carbon dioxide as it produced during the 2010s—about 400 gigatons—before it uses up the rest of its 1.5-degree budget, the new report finds. But the world’s existing fossil-fuel infrastructure, as already built and financed, would generate another 660 to 850 gigatons of emissions.

So in what sense is 1.5 degrees still "technically feasible"? He explains, "Meeting the goal will require taking coal, oil, and natural-gas capacity offline before it was designed to shut down." That is, ushering in a new stone age.

It is interesting that Meyer doesn't quite despair. When Michael Moore accepted that the environmentalist movement was built on magical thinking and lies, he leaned in to the new stone age -- and the mass extinction which would necessarily accompany it -- as the only way to save the planet. But Meyer actually defends 1.5 C as a noble lie and motivator:

It inspired a new round of global climate concern. The aggressive climate action of the past few years—Greta Thunberg’s protests, Wall Street’s calls for corporate sustainability, even Europe’s Green Deal—would have been unimaginable without the 1.5-degree report.

He closes the piece with a note of concern that the loss of 1.5 C as a target might be dispiriting to some environmentalist groups which have built their branding and institutional strategies around it. Meyer quotes an I.P.C.C. member who suggests a rhetorical shift to 1.6 C, or even "well below 2 degrees Celsius." Look for that to be adjusted in a few years.

Meanwhile, in the real world, sea levels are fairly stable and sea ice is expanding. The climate is changing, yes, but never quite in the way or within the timeframe that the I.P.C.C. worshippers claim. Here's hoping that this disappointment will inspire a few perspective Greta Thunberg's to wake up and smell the CO2. It's glorious.

Ethanol for Cows, not Cars

How's this for a headline?

Reuters:

Corn-based ethanol, which for years has been mixed in huge quantities into gasoline sold at U.S. pumps, is likely a much bigger contributor to global warming than straight gasoline, according to a study published Monday. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contradicts previous research commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) showing ethanol and other biofuels to be relatively green....

“Corn ethanol is not a climate-friendly fuel,” said Dr. Tyler Lark, assistant scientist at University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment and lead author of the study. The research... found that ethanol is likely at least 24% more carbon-intensive than gasoline due to emissions resulting from land use changes to grow corn, along with processing and combustion.

Of course, as the piece helpfully reminds us, the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard mandates that our oil refiners blend roughly fifteen billion gallons of corn-based ethanol into our gasoline per year, ostensibly for the sake of combatting carbon dioxide initiated "anthropogenic climate change." It turns out that, in the nearly two decades it has been in place, the Renewable Fuel Standard has actually increased the amount of carbon in the atmosphere!

Now, this story will have a familiar ring to it for regular readers of The Pipeline. Over the past two years we've covered the environmental (as well as the economic) costs of electric vehicles, solar panels, wind farms, biomass and other passions of the environmentalist left. Every item of that list has downsides that either mitigate or obliterate their supposed environmental benefits.

But that isn't to call them failures. That would be to assume that saving the environment was their main purpose. To be sure, there are sincere environmentalists. But for the men and women running the show, the environmentalist movement is an investment. Its monetary returns -- driven by cronyist mandates such as the Renewable Fuel Standard and massive "green energy" subsides -- are enormous. And then there's the cultural capital they accrue for the time and effort they put into saving the world from "climate change."

As studies like the one above show, the environment would be better off without them.

It's Not About Energy, It's About Power

One of the argument of the globalists is that the amount of available fossil fuel cannot generate the energy required to lift the Third World to the First. Hence, the First World must reduce its energy consumption such that both First and Third Worlds come to a median usage – bad for the First World, great for the Third World (for now) and perfect for the elites no longer having the global middle class competing with them for energy and prosperity.

This is what the "climate change" hoax is about – not CO2. The poor become richer, the middle becomes poorer, and the ruling class continues their accelerating use of energy, and accumulation of wealth and power at the expense of the other eight billion human beings on planet earth. In short: the future is put on indefinite hold and the global poor never reach their potential as human beings. If you want to look for “systemic racism,” you just found it.

This way to the Egress!

The elites demand control over our energy because power is all that genuinely interests them. They have essentially immeasurable and un-spendable wealth that no longer differentiates them from each other; their “mine’s bigger” metric now is power. Why else would they seek more, always more, rather than work toward a prosperous global community, unfettered energy concerns, a beneficiary regardless of race, creed or color?

Skip the arrogance of globalists who believe and, because energy has given them the power to do so, act to reduce global wealth as they grab an ever-larger share of prosperity and energy from the working and poor peoples of the world… and consider instead progress.

Not creating energy and limiting its use reduces, retards and reverses progress. This harms everyone alive, and everyone not yet born. How can one begin to measure the immorality of a billionaire demanding his or her transient energy usage to be so important as to deprive billions of human beings yet unborn the progress they ought to be able to have expected? For that is exactly what is being done with the “climate change” hoax.

But – “abundant energy.” How (on earth) do we arrive at that? In the same way that the founder of Greenpeace – not your basic anti-environmental person – has been proselytizing: nuclear.

It really is that simple.

Regardless of the fact that, until Chernobyl, the worst thing to happen to nuclear power was a ridiculous movie from Hollywood, that more people had died in Ted Kennedy’s car than in nuclear power accidents, and that the accident at Chernobyl – an outdated reactor with outdated safety mechanisms that were ignored by ill-trained techs – killed about 30 people outright and, perhaps led to the deaths of as many as 6,000, nuclear is far and away the safest, cleanest, and lowest creator of greenhouse gases. That 6,000 number? A tragedy, to be sure. But about 1.25 percent of the annual smoking deaths in America.

Some will object, noting the deaths-over-time of radiation sickness. The U.N. looked at the 20 years following the disaster, writing,

Among the residents of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, there had been up to the year 2005 more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer reported in children and adolescents who were exposed at the time of the accident, and more cases can be expected during the next decades.

However, the committee adds:

Apart from this increase, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure two decades after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure. The incidence of leukemia in the general population, one of the main concerns owing to the shorter time expected between exposure and its occurrence compared with solid cancers, does not appear to be elevated.

In contrast to that 6,000 number, in that same twenty-year span America experienced about 9.5 million smoking deaths, 1.1 million motor-vehicle deaths, and about 4 million deaths from medical mistakes. None of these produced one watt of energy to help the feed, clothe, house, educate or provide prosperity to the populace.

What about the costs of studying, industrializing, and deploying a green infrastructure? Since 1993, OMB has reported over $154 billion in funding for federal climate change activities, plus a half-a-billion dollars wasted in the Solyndra scandal that did nothing for energy.

Is this “green” infrastructure zero-greenhouse gas? No. Millions of tons of steel and concrete – that otherwise would not have been mined, transported, refined, transported, formed, transported, erected, and then taken down in twenty years, transported and dumped into a landfill, are the non-green costs of this boondoggle that, at the end of this 30-year period still has not produced one watt of base-load electricity. The kind of electricity the Davos clique needs to run their server farms to better surveil us.

Is nuclear a good investment? True, the expense of building current-generation nuclear plants is enormous. But,

This energy return on investment (EROI), the ratio of the energy delivered by a process to the energy used directly and indirectly in that process, is part of life-cycle analysis (LCA). …. The major published study on EROI, by Weissbach et al (2013, since the early editions of this paper) states: “The results show that nuclear, hydro, coal, and natural gas power systems (in this order) are one order of magnitude more effective than photovoltaics and wind power.”

“In this order…” Nuclear is at the top of the list in productivity of energy creation, higher than GHG-creating fossil fuels and ten times more efficient than “renewables” unable to consistently power a modern society.

But – safety!

Chernobyl, 1986

Unlike Chernobyl or Fukushima, when control mechanisms fail in a modern design the plant shuts down in a process called “passive safety,” successfully tested for over twenty years. A Three Mile Island or a Chernobyl or Fukushima simply cannot happen. Another safety issue in the global nuclear-waste discussion is that new systems can burn spent fuel rods and unused weapons-grade material, of which the First World has far too much laying around.

If we want to alleviate greenhouse gases, clean-up the environment, create the jobs energy creates (rather than destroy the jobs which green agendas destroy), reduce – or eliminate – the risk of weapons-grade fuel stored in various locations with varying degrees of security around the world, and ensure the continued fruits of liberty, invention, prosperity for future generations, one – and only one – answer exists: Nuclear.

If we chose to spend as much in nuclear reactor research as we throw-away on centuries-old “technology” of windmills, we all could move into a cleaner and more prosperous future in the liberty the Green elites and our own government seek to deny us.

The Tower of Babel Rises Again

Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

-- Proverbs 16:18

Although human society, generally speaking, has undergone massive cultural, political, scientific and technological changes over the millennia, the structure of the human psyche has remained stable. The moral code of the Judeo-Christian West, honored more in the breach than the observance, is still intact, however occluded. The deadly vices and the cardinal virtues remain in place. The personality types are similar.

The myths, stories, characters and admonitions we read in the Hebrew Bible are as relevant today as they were in the 15th Century BC, in particular the familiar tale of the Tower of Babel. (Genesis 11:1-9.) The story is known to everyone. After the flood, a wandering people found a plain in the land of Shinar where they settled, and said “let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven.” It did not go well for the over-reachers. The Lord came down, as the passage reads, confounded their language, and “scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth.”

The Tower of Babel, a word-play for Babylon, mocks the grandiose plans and brazen presumption of megalomaniac personalities. The Book of Daniel, written thirteen centuries after Genesis, takes up the same theme. King Nebuchadnezzer, who gloried in his regal splendor, built “the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty.” The city that rose on the alluvial plain—in actuality, the plain of Shinar—was meant as a tribute to his authority and grandeur. He was shortly reduced for his self-exaltation to the condition of “the beasts of the field,” until his reason returned to him and he awakened to the folly of his pride. 

What's past is prologue.

The biblical account of human hubris, dismissed as a mere fable, is a warning we have failed to heed. Here the wisdom of the prophet Habbakuk would apply: “I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved.” (Habbakuk 2:1.) The tower in question is a watchtower, a vantage point from which one detects and renounces the conceit associated with that other Tower.

The point is, of course, that there are mysteries we should not tamper with, that exceed our powers of understanding and control. While extending our reach to acquire knowledge, to plumb the Creation, and to harness nature to our benefit, there are limitations to human pride and impetuosity we would do well to acknowledge. It is a fine line but an irreversible one that should not be crossed. What may be a mortal sin in a theological view of life may be regarded as an unforgiving error in a secular world. 

Man does with dangerous curiosity
These unfathon’d wonders try:
With fancied rules and arbitrary laws
Matter and motion he restrains;
And studies lines and fictious circles draws:
Then with imagin’d sovereignty
Lord of his new hypothesis he reigns.

-- Matthew Prior, On Exodus III

In our present moment, Green technology fetish is a typical example of so transgressive a blunder. A quasi-scientific fiction of how reliable energy can be generated in an environmentally friendly way, it is worse than a mere fantasy. It is an intervention into the forces of nature that leads to the destruction of the environment, the production of noxious substances, the uprooting of economies from their productive base, and the near-impossibility of safe and efficient re-cycling.

Wind turbines rise like micro-installments of the Tower of Babel, promising to exploit the weather in ways that have proven ineffective and, in fact, harmful. They are “technological, financial, and ecological scams,” distorting the landscape, causing hecatombs of avian and insect life, producing prodigious amounts of radioactive waste and neurological hazards like ILFN (Infrasound and Low Frequency Noise). The acoustic signature of wind turbine noise can be profound; moreover, as Australian acoustical engineer Steven  Cooper confirms, the signal pulsations occur across entire frequencies, and are not just limited to the infra-sound region. Indeed, the only windmills worth tilting against are wind turbines. One needs a revitalized and success-oriented Alonso Quixano the Good, aka Don Quixote, to eviscerate a public mirage, Green energy, whose reason for existence is predicated on faulty and deceptive computer models

Wanted: a modern man of la Mancha.

Michael Crichton was right when he urged in State of Fear that we need “more people working in the field, in the actual environment, and fewer people behind computer screens.” Once again, he writes, “the measures being urged have little basis in fact or science. Once again, groups with other agendas are hiding behind a movement that appears high-minded. Once again, claims of moral superiority are used to justify extreme actions.” Green is a theory without adequate basis in reality. Anthropogenic Global Warming is a prepossession advanced by the extortionate and the ignorant, who divide the “territory” between them.

An equally if not more destructive foray into the structural complexities of the natural environment involves the project to reduce global warming—the most hypothetical of theoretical constructs—by tampering with stratospheric chemistry. Bill Gates, our contemporary Nebuchadnezzer, has advanced a preposterous and dangerous bioengineering plan to spray tons of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) dust into space to dim the sun’s rays.

This is a prelude to disaster, an intervention of the worst kind, and a telling instance of the obtuseness and naiveté of the supposedly super-brilliant. Though generally favorable to Gate’s solar engineering venture, Forbes reminds us that such science comes with unpredictable risks and that a “[m]ajor disruption of global climate could bring unintended consequences”—drought, crop failure and famine. 

In this respect, Gates resembles Obama’s Energy czar John Holdren, who absurdly proposed last-resort interventionist options, such as “shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays”—an atmoforming scheme that would unleash a geoengineered climate debacle. One recalls, too, the loony 1975 IPCC proposal to spread black carbon (soot) across the ice fields to absorb the heat of the sun and so reduce global cooling

Another no less destructive intervention into the complexities of nature, in this case human biology, entails what is euphemistically called “gender confirmation surgery,” especially with regard to young children encouraged to “transition.” Turning males into females and vice versa is considered by many—rightly, I believe—as an abomination, an intrusive manipulation of biologically established sexual identity that will often lead to a lifelong condition of traumatic dysphoria. Some regard this as a violation of a Divine dispensation, others as crime against nature and a psychological travesty. Whatever perspective we may adopt on the issue, the mission to permanently reorder or denormalize the givens of genetic and physiological codes and structures is a form of meddling with the parameters of life that almost inevitably issues in misery and confusion.

Still another infringement of natural law involves the introduction of so-called vaccines to combat the coronavirus infection. As I have written in a previous article for The Pipeline, they are not “vaccines” as we understand them. They are experimental mRNA strands injected into and systematically altering a person’s genetic code, and may severely exacerbate the degree of suffering we are seeing. Global Research makes no bones about this. The mRNA “vaccines” made by Pfizer and Moderna “are a dangerously new exotic creature…that actively hijack[s] your genes and reprograms them.” Dr. Tal Zaks, chief medical officer at Moderna Inc., admits that “We are actually hijacking the software of life.”

Adverse consequences abound: facial paralysis (Bell’s Palsy), blood clotting, anaphylaxis, and even death. According to the National Vaccine Information Center, there have been as of February 26, 2021, 25,212 recorded adverse advents and 1,265 deaths. These are conservative estimates since less than 1% of all vaccine injuries and deaths are reported to VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System), a passive, government funded database that relies on voluntary submissions.

It is cold comfort indeed that the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) has informed clients that “Policyholders should rest assured that nothing has changed in the claims-paying process as a result of Covid-19 vaccinations.” That alone tells us what we need to know. 

We should keep in mind that Covid is a digital virus, constructed from a computer database generating a genomic sequence. The vaccine was not based on “an actual isolated sample of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.” Neither its long- nor short-term safety and effectiveness is assured. Global Research points out that these “vaccines” are really operating systems installed not in computers but in our bodies. Approximately 15 countries to date have suspended the AstraZeneca vaccine. (The AstraZeneca product has not yet been approved for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.) 

Of course it's safe -- why do you ask?

The prognosis is sobering. Once we have reached the inflexion point of re-engineering the sky, scrambling sexual differentiation and re-mapping the genetic code, we will have crossed the line of no return, and the Tower of Hubris we have raised will crumble before us. We will never be the same. As the Bible warns, we will scatter in disarray, we will babble in futile recriminations, victims of an overweening arrogance that has breached the natural limits of our tenure on this planet. 

Will our reason return to us and will we awaken to the folly of our pride, as happened providentially to the Babylonian tyrant? “The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee,” the prophet rebukes the self-important, “thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD.” (Obadiah 1:3). One need not be a believer to take the exhortation to heart.

'Climate Change' Marxists, Come Out of the Closet

Putting aside the fact that the entire “climate change” discussion is based on a long-disproven set of data abandoned even by its author, that it is physically impossible to create the electrical systems and capacity demanded by the Warming hypothesis, and that no uncorrupted global temperature data set supports “climate change,” we are left with the fact that a great many policymakers and voters in the West believe in it.

Policymakers must be expected by voters to get serious, or to acknowledge that the entire argument is, as the U.N. has stated, just a process to destroy capitalism, the most anti-poverty, wealth-creation system ever created.

That "climate change" policies will annihilate the middle class that is responsible for all progress since the Industrial Revolution is a given – and an unacknowledged goal of Progressives. The refusal to acknowledge this by the establishment is childish. If they believe in Marxism, why hide it? Tell the people the goal, why it is a beneficial goal and how to achieve it. Tell them the results of previous attempts at implementing Marxism, as well, of course.

Look who's back.

Can a policy framework be created to address function rather than form, what is seen by those who insist the Warming Emperor has clothes, but who disagree on the cut (oil or gas), the color (drilling or fracking) and the pattern (fossil, hydro or nuclear) of those clothes to meet their commitments?

The signatories to the Paris Accords believe emissions must be reduced in order to “save the planet,” and that they will meet the goals to which they agreed. Why, otherwise, would they have signed up? Are the signatories incentivized to make the changes for which they volunteered? Given their dismal performance to-date, the answer is, “No.”

People complain about President Trump having pulled-out of the Paris Accords, but remain silent about the view of the U.N.: “America Is Already Cutting So Much Carbon It Doesn’t Need The Paris Climate Accord.” As shown below, we already are reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) output faster than any signatory country. Being a Paris signatory seems primary, meeting one’s goal, secondary. These priorities are backward.

Is the point being a signatory… or reducing greenhouse gases?

In a flight of fancy in which we pretend that, yes, we can correct the global climate that has been set awry by too many American SUVs, why not formulate a policy with teeth to deal with GHG? Can we use positive and negative incentives to alter behavior in the way demanded by those who believe they are more powerful than the sun?

Yes, we can.

Let us suppose a nation “A” that has met and exceeded its GHG commitment to the Paris Accords, and a nation “B” that has not. What incentives can be used to resolve the discrepancy between commitment and performance?

A suggestion: If nation “A” has met 105% of commitment, and nation “B,” 88%, a metric to create a “Paris Transfer Payment,” or “PTP,” could be created. Nation “B” would pay annually to nation “A” a PTP on its failure of 12%, and another 5% to reward the success of “A,” for a total of 17% of this base metric, thus incentivizing both nations to continue to work toward GHG reduction. (Alternately, the 12% “stick” could be paid to a fund to help the non-industrialized world progress without despoiling the environment, but the 5% “carrot” still paid to the above-goal country.)

A sensible metric could be a percentage of GDP of each country. If we were to use, for example, 0.01% of GDP of the smaller economy as this metric, the PTP could be calculated with complete transparency. In this instance, country “B” (88% of commitment; GDP $500B), would pay a PTP to country “A” (105% of commitment; GDP $1,500B) of 17 times 0.01% of its GDP, or $850M, as a “stick,” and “A” would gain that PTP as a “carrot” for acting in the best interests of the global community of nations. This example is illustrated in Table 1.

Table One.

Those nations not having set a target for GHG reduction would have the applicable percent calculated by averaging their per-capita GHG output against the goals of nations of similar size. China and India (without which any global GHG reduction is chimerical), would be compared to countries above 200 million population (United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil), and have their GHG reduction goals set for them, and the PTP applied by the WTO via tariffs.

A nation’s choice of hydro, fracking, nuclear, oil, gas, coal, solar, wind would be theirs. The results are what matters. Form will not reduce the ocean’s rise; function will.

European nations keep telling America how backward we are; obviously they can use IP we – not they – invented, and manufacturing and distribution and energy exploitation systems we – not they – created to achieve the results we – not they – have achieved.

(This same calculation can be used in reverse to warm the planet if, as most uncorrupted temperature data sets now show, the globe is cooling. A “snowball earth” is far more of an existential threat than more food and a slightly-warmer climate.)

Who turned off the "warming"?

If meeting the Paris commitment is the goal of the signatories, how could this type of transparent, goal-oriented arrangement be rejected? A payment transfer system from those not meeting their commitments to the community of nations, to those who are is a win-win for the future and for countries taking the "climate change" issue seriously.

If nations agree to implement a carrot-and-stick PTP, we will know they are serious. If they are serious, and if they are correct in their anti-sun worship, we all will be better off.  If they don’t agree to an agreement with teeth, we will know they are not serious, and can be ignored.