Much Ado About Nothing

The Biden Administration recently announced new plans to further regulate polyfluoroalkyl substances, a class of chemicals generically known as PFAS. Such initiatives typically target pollutants that have been found in relatively high concentrations, especially when that pollutant is reactive. That is the case with chemicals like ethylene oxide, benzene, ozone, and a host of others. It's a bit different with PFAS. These are chemicals that are just barely detectable and are basically inert.

So why the fire drill? Are PFAS compounds a clear and present danger to the health and welfare of Americans? What is the best strategy to mitigate the PFAS threat to human health and the environment if they are? As important, how big of a threat are PFAS compounds to either?

It’s unlikely that we’ll ever get honest answers to those questions. The independent, rational, scientific traditions that encouraged critical thinking and informed disagreement is fading away in western civilization. In its place, we are increasingly subject to state-approved science formulated by armies of technocrats and administered by legions of bureaucrats. When the scientific method is eventually dead and buried, I have a suggestion for the epitaph to be engraved on its tombstone: “better safe than sorry.”

Those words concisely express the essence of the Precautionary Principle. The Precautionary Principle, in turn, is a bane of modern existence. It’s a societal plague that breeds cowardice, inhibits progress and encourages insularity in thought and in practice. It was probably inevitable that environmental organizations would eventually target these remarkable fluorinated compounds in another fit of excess caution.

It's all relative.

To a chemist, fluorine is one of the most remarkable elements on the periodic table. It forms incredibly strong bonds with other atoms, giving PFAS chemicals their unique characteristics and their resiliency. The last is especially troublesome to the E.P.A. and environmental groups who have dubbed PFAS “forever chemicals.” The implication being that once created they are impossible to get rid of. That’s not entirely accurate, but it must be admitted that getting rid of PFAS compounds does take a bit more work than your run of the mill waste product.

Should we not be concerned about these "forever chemicals"? There's two parts to that question. First, does having a particular chemical in your system for a long time necessarily harm your system? The answer to that depends on the chemical and the dose. It would be fair to call silicon dioxide, what we commonly call sand, a “forever chemical” every bit as much as PFAS. Absent willful and energetic processing, sand is sand and will remain sand. So do we worry if we ingest some sand into our system? If it's not much and it's in our gastrointestinal system the body recognizes it as a waste, something it has no use for, and will pass it through the GI tract and colon to be eliminated.

I am not a biologist. So I do not know if PFAS compounds bioaccumulate in the body in part or in whole. If they do they certainly don't accumulate in substantial amounts. We can say that because when people have conducted studies and found PFAS in the water, in the air, and in the soil they find it in concentrations that are in the parts per trillion or less levels.

A part per trillion is an incredibly small concentration. It is the equivalent of 1 drop of water in enough water to fill 20 Olympic sized swimming pools. Twenty or thirty years ago we didn't even have the technology that would allow us to look at these extremely low concentrations. Are concentrations that low a significant threat to human health and the environment? I cannot answer that question definitively, but I don't think anyone else can do so either.

When the E.P.A. and environmental groups talk about PFAS they inevitably choose verbs that allow them to hedge their bets. Verbs like “may” and “could” and “suggests.” As in: “research suggests that these compounds may be associated with – fill name of your favorite scary disease – and that these effects may be more serious among the elderly and newborn children.”

Definitive verbs are to be avoided at all costs. Verbs like will or does or demonstrates. It takes years of indoctrination by the technocrats and the bureaucrats before they'll move up to definitive verbs. At that point the war is over and the scientists have lost. There was a time when "climate change" was discussed as a potential threat, as a hypothesis worth examining, but not as a proven fact. We are well beyond that point today. Every politician, every journalist, every representative of an environmental NGO talks about "climate change" in terms of certainty. They assure us that the science is settled. The E.P.A.'s PFAS Strategic Road Map puts us well on the way to settling this rather dubious bit of science as well.

Dr. Thunberg demands change now.

I cannot assert that parts per trillion levels of these compounds are not a serious threat to human health and the environment. Nor can I assert they are. I doubt if there's any single scientist who can say one way or the other. I doubt there is anyone who can say pursuing this research is worth the cost compared to other priorities the E.P.A. might be pursuing. But I can predict the E.P.A. will follow its usual playbook: develop a large set of very restrictive rules, very expensive rules, whose cost will be justified by the theoretical reduction in the hospitalizations and death that will be assumed. Not proven. Assumed. That's what inevitably happens. At one point during the Obama administration E.P.A. director Lisa Jackson claimed so much savings from environmental regulations that we could have paid off the national debt had her numbers been accurate.

New rules are coming that will affect regulations covering water, covering land, covering the air, covering waste disposal, covering approval of new and existing chemicals. These rules will largely be developed by the technocrats and bureaucrats alone. Yes, once they're developed there will be comment periods and the various agencies will be flooded with comments. As a result of the comments there'll be a change here and a change there but really no substantive changes in direction. The rules are developed in an echo chamber where only cheerleaders are present. Only then are they presented to the public. No matter. Experience shows that what is finally approved will look much like whatever is first proposed.

It's possible this effort could become another bust like Alar, toxic mold, and endocrine disruptors. All of those crises du jour more or less went away after time. Maybe it will be the same with PFAS. But given the way that fantasies have materialized into so-called realities so quickly over the last few years I fear that massive investments in PFAS regulations, controls and clean-up will be a part of our lives for a long time to come.

Diary of an Acclimatised Beauty: Neckering

You know how some mornings you wake up with your mind empty—and not a care in the world? It’s absolute paradise. But that wasn’t today. And despite waking up in actual paradise (Necker Island), thoughts of work had scissored in and out of my dreams until finally I opened my eyes in defeat. 

Still… defeat in paradise was not so bad. On my side of the island, I was given a standalone room which is even more secluded than the stunning Great House Rooms. But the tween-agers in residence avoided waking their parents by coming to my side and conducting themselves as absolute savages. If only I’d smuggled a plastic straw into my luggage it could have served as a makeshift blowgun.

I’m not generally so unkind but the bad parents of the world are pressing on my last nerve. And if you’re in airports you see them—prodding those pajama-clad imps who will never become pursers, or pilots, or software salesmen, or any of the other professions whose travel they obstruct.

Ready to rock for the planet.

Ironically it is for future generations that I am saving the planet. A generation that includes one Seattle schoolboy, who has taken it upon himself to attack the carbon footprint of the private jet set… (aka my clients), and the very people who are actively engaged in saving our planet. Thankfully topping the list of eco-offenders were the Kardashians, but two of my clients were also in the top ten, and unhappy doesn’t even begin to cover it. The difference obviously, is my clients are in service of the planet; and this kid just wants to fault us for trying to do our jobs.

It was nearly 11:00 before I’d made any headway and hoped that people would think I was intermittent fasting rather than sleeping or watching Netflix, especially since I’m not here entirely for the holibobs.

With the pre-teen terrorists out of my 180° view, I stepped onto my veranda and witnessed the storied flock of 500+ flamingoes that have been bio-engineered back into inhabitance. Never before had I seen anything so breathtaking. I was mesmerised, and wanted to bathe my eyes in their shocking-coral beauty as long as I could. Lunch and clients would have to wait.

Eventually I made my way down and embedded my mobile in the bottom of my raffia tote. The tween-agers were now swarming around the sushi and fresh crab claws—well of course they were, and ordering specialty slushies and french fries, and the adults were hitting golf balls into the Caribbean , which suits me just fine as my game is limited to one decent big swing anyway. Despite the target being a vast azure sea… two men were debating a Golf Digest article on why the flagstick should be pulled out 99% of the time. I took this as a sign to fish out my phone.  

I was craving a Bloody Mary but coming into focus was that dreadful man from Beef Island Airport. I’d assumed we were headed to different places as he boarded a boat and I arrived by helicopter but alas, he was here. I plunged my hand into my bag and fished out my sunglasses but to no avail. He’d seen me and so I put my phone to my ear and began an entirely imaginary conversation. Just my luck, the phone rang while I was talking and I had to do the whole how weird that we got disconnected routine. 

Still hasn't got the memo.

It was daddy alerting me to the fact that Al Gore might be booted from the board at Apple. ‘Yes, we are on top of that’, I said in a voice that told my father I clearly was not.

‘Yeahhh… I didn’t think you’d seen it’, he said picking up on my tone. ‘It was done by exempt solicitation, which is likely why you missed it.  Or maybe you got sunscreen in your eyes at the office…’

Typical Daddy. ‘Indeed’ I said, and thanked him profusely for ringing me.

Lunch was over—I had work to do.  I took two steps toward returning to my room and ran smack into the annoying man, who was somehow even more off-putting in less clothing. ‘What brings you here?’ he asked.

‘Helicopter!’ I said, and made my exit.

Back in the paradise that is my room I opened my laptop. It was bad. ‘Gore’s political activism not worth his limited skill set’... ‘Was never qualified to serve on Apple’s board in the first place’... ‘Playing “Chicken Little” for global warming…’  OMG! Global warming?? We’d dropped that term ages ago! Like I said—bad.  

The sky is falling! It's the end of the world!

I scanned the internet for anything linking Richard Branson to Al Gore and found Mr Branson putting forth a prize for anyone who could extract carbon from the atmosphere. Crikey! The interview was decades old but there they were—side by side for all the world to see. When asked if this carbon trap was a gimmick Gore replied, ‘I don’t think so’. You don’t think so? Ugh! It was a blood bath… with Gore preening like someone who clearly doesn’t know he’s going to be proven wrong in the years to come. I couldn’t save him and also save the planet. It was crunch time.

Four hours later I sent time codes and a press release to my assistant and dressed for dinner. What a day it had been! Joining the other guests, the chatter was light and lyrical under a canopy of perfect sky, and not a mobile in sight. With the exception of our host that is. I could see him nervously checking on Gore’s possible ouster. He needn’t have worried though, as I’d successfully partitioned him and eventually telegraphed a smile and a thumbs up.

The finished press packet was brilliant. It ended with a clip of that fated interview wherein the host asks, ‘Is Al Gore a prophet?’  And Richard quips, ‘How do you spell profit?’

Now I can relax. 

Still the Only Thing We Have to Fear

On March 4, 1933 newly elected President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt made this famous declaration during his inaugural address: “…let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself; nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” FDR had his faults, as all leaders do, but uttering those words to a nation terrified by hopelessness and dread was a shining moment in his career.

On February 20, 2023 The Pipeline's editor Michael Walsh wrote this: “…democracy does not "die in darkness." It dies in chaos, brought on by fear, engendered by uncertainty and birthed of instability…” While I’m not willing to suggest that Walsh's eloquence should move him to seek elected office, or to be regularly photographed grinning with a fancy cigarette holder clenched in his teeth, I do believe that his declaration is every bit as profound as Roosevelt’s was ninety years prior.

In 1933 Americans were terrified by enormous economic upheaval few citizens understood. The disaster seemed unsolvable to most. In 2023 Americans are terrified by rapid advances in technologies and the sciences that – to many – seem to create problems as equally dangerous and apparently unsolvable as the Great Depression did in 1933.

FDR: Fear itself.

This writer is not an expert on all technologies and all of science. We’ve advanced way to far for anyone to lay claim to being a modern-day Da Vinci. That said, this writer is an expert on the complex intersection of chemistry, environmental protection, risk evaluation, and public policy. In that world Walsh’s description holds true: all rational parts of that equation are dying in chaos, brought on by fear, engendered by uncertainty, and birthed of instability. Moreover, I firmly believe that is the case in many, likely most, other areas of scientific discipline when they intersect with public policy or popular trends. In this era of mass, instantaneous communication, nothing is guaranteed to attract more attention than communicating fear.

Consider how many people routinely purchase indoor “air purifiers” that are designed to remove air contaminants from indoor air by generating the most widely regulated air pollutant in America: ozone. Ozone is basically oxygen on steroids; three oxygen atoms bonded together rather than the usual two. The extra atom gives ozone some unique properties, among which is its ability to react with a variety of air contaminants and remove them from the air we breathe. So far so good, except for the fact that ozone is itself a highly regulated air contaminant. Reducing ozone in the air we breathe has been the focus of EPA and environmental group efforts for over fifty years.

The EPA has reduced the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone three times since the original Clean Air Act was promulgated. Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama all reduced the ozone standard, largely in response to environmental group claims that the preceding standard was not sufficiently protective of human health. There are mountains of regulations designed to reduced ozone formation. Vehicles have catalytic convertors largely to reduce ozone formation. If you live in an urban area, you pay for low vapor pressure gasoline in the summer months to reduce ozone formation. The push to reduce ozone formation affects the price we pay for electricity, natural gas, consumer goods, and a host of other areas.

Liberals have toyed with the ludicrous idea of banning natural gas-fired appliances, but none seems moved to grab this incredibly low-hanging fruit: Americans are routinely purchasing air-pollution generators in the name of improving air quality! It’s the sort of exploitation of fear and ignorance that would have amazed even Orwell.

Beware the O-Zone.

Ozone-generating air purifiers are just one example of the ignorance and hypocrisy that infects issues involving science and technology. Fire up your favorite search engine and try out the following queries: “manganese pollution,” “lead toxicity,” and “poly-aromatic hydrocarbons cancer risk.” You’ll find some dry, technically-accurate but boring as hell to read discussions involving those keywords published by government agencies and academics, and you’ll also find articles in which “experts” warn readers about the extreme danger associated with exposure to those compounds.

But how significant are these supposed dangers? Let’s start with manganese. Do you or a loved one take a multi-vitamin on a regular basis? Take a look at the ingredient list. Chances are you’ll find manganese listed among the minerals included.

This may give you pause. There are plenty of stories out there that describe manganese as a dangerous neuro-toxin. There are plenty of community leaders, political types, and environmental activists wringing their hands about the fate of the poor, innocent children exposed to this poison. So what the heck is it doing in your vitamins?

The answer is that manganese is an important and necessary micro-nutrient. Your body doesn’t need a lot of it, but it needs some of it. Chemicals are neither inherently toxic or non-toxic. The dose makes the poison, so it’s the amount one is exposed to and the route of exposure that ultimately matter. Good luck finding any member of the modern intelligentsia who understands, much less can explain, that simple fact.

Most everyone is aware of the dangers associated with ingesting lead. Less well known is that virtually every kitchen in the United States contains bowls and utensils that contain lead. For lead is a minor, but measurable, component of many grades of stainless steel—and whose kitchen doesn’t have a stainless item in it?

Does the amount of lead contained in stainless steel or how it is held within the lattice structure of the metal present any concerns about lead exposure? Not really, but don’t expect the fear-mongers to figure that out, even if they cared to do so.

Safety first.

And Poly Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH)? There’s plenty of literature talking about how these potentially toxic and/or carcinogenic compounds can be formed during the combustion of coal, oil or natural gas. True, so far as that goes, but in very tiny amounts that will expose the average citizen to concentrations so low they are hardly of concern.

On the other hand, the smoke from your campfire, the cloud coming from your charcoal grill and any smoked food you consume will contain much more PAH compounds than anything a power plant will expose you to. That doesn’t keep me from enjoying smoked and barbecue foods, but then I’m not a hypocrite.

If you’re reading this piece, most experts agree that you are probably alive. Other experts tell us that sometime in the future you will cease to be alive. In between then and now, do yourself a favor: enjoy life. One of the ways you can enjoy it best is by tuning out the sad, ignorant masters of exploitation and propaganda who dream up ways to try to control your behavior by exploiting your natural tendency to exercise extreme caution when facing fear itself.

Yet Another 'Disaster' That Actually Wasn't

The East Palestine, Ohio derailment “disaster” presents us with an interesting twist on the way that the public relations professionals exert control over both political parties. Usually, when there is a Republican president in office and something goes off the rails (pun intended) in the environmental world, Democrat media types quickly develop talking points designed to paint the party in power as indifferent and/or incompetent. The MSM, fulfilling its role as the primary public relations tool of the Democrat party, dutifully follows suit.

With East Palestine, the roles are reversed. Many in the Republican party have now assumed the hand-wringing role, no doubt following the instructions of their own PR professionals. (Note to J.D. Vance: it's not a "chemical rainbow," it's a petroleum sheen. Next time your car leaks a little hydraulic fluid and there's a rainstorm, you can enjoy watching one appear in your driveway.) I take little pleasure in pointing out the error of the party’s ways in this case, but err they did. The same, sadly, is true of Fox’s Tucker Carlson, who is usually a reliable and thoughtful source of commentary. He too got this one wrong.

The East Palestine derailment was no disaster. Disasters require multiple bodies, or extensive/expensive property damage, or long-term environmental harm, preferably all three. East Palestine includes none of those elements. The one thing East Palestine had that allows people to label it a disaster is ugly visuals. I get it. Everyday, non-technical people who don’t understand dispersion, or exposure, or risk see that big black cloud and think “that’s what disasters look like!”

Looks worse than it was.

Those politicians and journalists who tried to use the East Palestine derailment as a means to attack the Biden administration and its secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg, played the same game as their Democrat counterparts regularly play. Their concern sounded sincere, but there was nothing of substance to be had in their declarations. It’s the political equivalent of Professor Harold Hill whipping up the citizens of River City against the evils of pool. I have no idea what qualifies Buttigieg to be in the cabinet, but using a train derailment to criticize the guy is the political equivalent of kicking a puppy, and a not very clever puppy at that.

There are facts about East Palestine that are true, but don’t actually matter. Toxic materials were present and some had been released into the environment. True, but immaterial. Burning off the contents of a tanker containing vinyl chloride released potentially toxic chemicals into the air. Also true, but also immaterial. Some potentially toxic chemicals could possibly seep into the water table, significantly affecting the quality of well-water that is used by some nearby residents. True again, but ultimately of no concern.

How can I make such claims? What makes me right and the vast majority of politicians and journalists wrong? The flip answer is this: I’m a chemist. They’re not. I’ve got 38 years experience dealing with atmospheric chemistry, dispersion modeling and risk evaluation. They don’t. Releasing potentially toxic chemicals into the environment does not necessarily mean that the environment will suffer, either in the long term or the short term. Generating potentially toxic pollutants and releasing them into the air does not necessarily put anybody in the public at risk. The toxicity of the chemical doesn’t matter. The amount of the chemical released doesn’t matter. The only things that ultimately matter are the following:

  1. What is the maximum dose of a chemical to which a person can be exposed and how does that dose compare to established (and quite conservative) public health guidelines?
  2. Can the chemical release cause actual, long-term damage to eco-systems or to natural resources that we depend on?

The chemically contaminated soil in East Palestine may be removed and replaced with clean fill. Alternately, it might be left in place for naturally-occurring bacteria to clean up, which they do quite well. The state and the feds will closely monitor the course of the spill to ensure that no one using wells drinks or uses contaminated water from them. It would not be a surprise to find the railroad hooking all well water users in the area up to city water. There will be no long-term environmental damage or danger to the local water supply if local officials and the railroad continue to do the right things.

The dispersion model says not to worry.

How about that ugly black cloud. Surely it put people at risk!? No, it didn’t. We have the tools to determine potential exposures to airborne pollutants to very high degree of accuracy in virtually any situation. Tried, tested, and true environmental tools called dispersion models enable us who are part of the environmental world to predict how plumes containing pollutants will behave upon being released to atmosphere.

The primary pollutant of concern generated by the vinyl chloride burn was hydrochloric acid. You may also know it as muriatic acid. Among other things, it does a great job of removing stains from concrete. The vast majority of the chlorine in vinyl chloride will form hydrochloric acid when burned. There are other, more toxic, chlorine compounds that can form during a burn, but the realities of chemistry means they will form in very small amounts that can be ignored.

I looked at emissions from the East Palestine burn using the most conservative dispersion model available, USEPA’s SCREEN3 model. It is designed to overestimate downwind exposures and we know it does just that because SCREEN3 results have been compared to real world measurement:

So let’s look at the plume generated by the East Palestine burn in those terms. As expected, the model predicts very high concentrations close to the burn, over 3,000 ppmv 100 meters away. That’s in the middle of the ugliest part of the cloud. There are also no people there. When you do a controlled burn you create an exclusion zone to keep everyone safe.

As the plume travels downwind, concentrations steadily drop. The exclusion zone during the burn was reported to be a one mile by two mile area downwind of the burn. That’s roughly 1,500 meters by 3,000 meters. At 1,500 meters the model predicts a peak concentration of 3.0 ppmv and at 3,000 meters the model predicts a peak concentration of 1.1 ppmv. Both values are far under the hydrochloric acid IDLH and comfortably under the OSHA PEL. The burn was ugly to see, but one is forced to conclude that the actual risk to people who followed orders to stay out of the exclusion zone was negligible. (If you want to see all my assumptions and calculations, use this link to download an Excel workbook that contains that information.)

Democrats who chant “follow the science” rarely do, especially when environmental issues are in play. How about we on the right use East Palestine as an opportunity to show them what following the science actually looks like, instead of playing their silly games?

ESG investors and the East Palestine Disaster

The derailed train in East Palestine, Ohio, has created significant environmental hazards, not only to the residents of that town but also to countless other communities along the Ohio River. The derailment led to an enormous chemical fire, with hundred-foot flames and a plume of black smoke exposing local communities to a variety of chemicals, including the carcinogen vinyl chloride and phosgene, the latter of which was used as a chemical weapon in World War I.

These highly toxic chemicals were spread into the air, water, and ground, and are threatening public health and displacing residents. The Ohio River is a source of drinking water for multiple states, and the E.P.A. is concerned that it has been seriously compromised. It is estimated that some 3,500 fish have been killed by the pollution thus far. Meanwhile, residents of East Palestine who have been assured that it is safe for them to return home have been complaining of nausea and severe headaches.

So it is a supreme irony that substantial shareholders in the railway involved, Norfolk Southern, include two of the biggest promoters of ESG investing: BlackRock and Vanguard.

According to various sources, top shareholders in Norfolk Southern Corp. are the Vanguard Group, and subsidiaries of BlackRock and JP Morgan. Specifically, as of this week, CNNMoney.com lists the Vanguard Group, Inc. as the top shareholder with 7.68 percent. BlackRock Fund Advisors and JPMorgan Investment Management tie at 4.54 percent as other top investors. As of December 31, 2022 Norfolk Southern’s own website lists Vanguard, BlackRock Institutional Trust Company and JP Morgan Asset Management as top shareholders.

The latest information about the cause of the accident and toxic discharge, indicates eleven of the fifty rail cars were carrying hazardous materials.

Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, criticized Norfolk Southern’s response in a Wednesday letter to Shaw, saying that mismanagement by the company had put first-responders and residents “at significant risk.” He said the rail company’s personnel made decisions without talking to state and local agencies, caused first-responders to have a lack of awareness, gave state officials inaccurate information about the impact of the controlled release of vinyl chloride and “failed to explore” alternatives to the controlled release that might have been safer.

“Norfolk Southern has repeatedly assured us of the safety of their rail cars — in fact, leading Norfolk Southern personnel described them to me as ‘the Cadillac of rail cars’ — yet despite these assertions, these were the same cars that Norfolk Southern personnel rushed to vent and burn without gathering input from state and local leaders,” Shapiro wrote.

Although not right now.

Both Vanguard and Black Rock are notable for having promoted investments based not on traditional criteria to which fiduciaries have been bound, such as profitability and capital accounts, but rather on how these investment managers assess the ESG (environmental, social and governmental) policies of the companies in which they place investment funds. Of course, their analyses are utterly subjective, fluid, and difficult to quantify. Unsurprisingly, these investments are generally underperforming. As we’ve frequently noted in this space in the past, a number of states are fighting back against placing investments through these operations for these very reasons.

Maybe, to be consistent with ESG policies, investors should shun Vanguard and BlackRock over their role in the disaster in East Palestine.

The 'Climate Emergency' Is Not Our Problem

Responses to the fantasy of a “climate emergency” grow crazier each year. It becomes more difficult to separate government programs from money laundering to the green lobby in it for themselves. International non-governmental organizations also have decided, somehow – and not through any popular vote or initiative – to collect and spend other people’s money (otherwise known as “other people’s labor”) in ways with which those other people may not agree and may not be happy, or willing, to support. The latest tyrannical idea, the "Fifteen Minute city," imprisoning us all within 15 minutes of our homes, is gaining favor amongst Western intelligentsia and will be coming to us (not to them!) soon.

Late in 2022, the U.N. decided that industrial, capitalistic (Western) nations must spend a few trillion dollars more, per year, bailing out poorer nations, many, if not most, of which reject both industrialization and capitalism. Which is why they are poor. President Biden offered Indonesia $20 billion for the climate scam. Why? To close their coal plants because the “rising” seas may become problematic. Even if that is true, why does that mean they need the fruits of our labor? America giving Indonesia money is just our providing labor and moving that labor to them with money, right? I don't work for Indonesia.

Happy New Year from Indonesia!

Let’s look at the numbers: Indonesia is a G20 member nation, with a Quality of Life score of 96.85, ranking #75 on their scale. While this is below the United States (#19), Indonesia outranks America in Safety (54:52) and Cost of Living Index (32:70); Indonesia is a bit safer and has a far lower cost of living than America. With a working age (15-64) population of 189,363,580, (12/2022), Indonesia’s GDP is 15th-highest in the world, at $1.05 trillion USD, or $5,545 per person of working age. America’s GDP is highest in the world, at $20.89 trillion, with a working age population of 214,685,514, or $97,305 per person of working age.

Indonesia has 54,716 km of coastline. Evidently rising seas mean the United States needs to pay for some remediation. But if that’s the case, Canada, the nation with the world’s longest coastline at 243,042 km, would also need our aid. If Indonesia needs $365,524 per km of coastline, wouldn’t Canada need the same per km, or $88.9 billion?

Indonesia has 5,123 people per kilometer of coastline; Canada only 159. Indonesia, with 32 times as many people per kilometer of coastline, should be able to remediate the “problem” much more easily with their own labor than Canada with theirs.

None of this makes any sense when you get down to facts, even if the climate scam were real. Because we are being asked – demanded – to subsidize third world countries, it makes sense to look at their history and cultures: It now is our money they are spending, the results of the labor, education, and culture of our men and women, money we earn for our children, not those of some other country to be decided by some unaccountable, usually corrupt bureaucrats not of our choosing.

If we want to talk about rising seas, let's look at the Netherlands. They’ve been dealing with sea levels for some time while becoming the world's second-largest food exporter, something their 'green lobby' is about to end at an unknown cost in global starvation. Their culture allows them to deal with sea levels not in spite of, but because of their history and culture.

The Dutch know how to do it.

If we want to talk about living near a river or on a small island – move. The idea of upending modernity because a few, or a few million people don’t want to move would be comedic even if the Klimate Kult were correct—if we didn’t have politicians demanding we cover the cost.

Perhaps it makes sense to some to demonize modernity as the source of wealth one is demanding in order to subsidize those not participating in the amazing wealth-generating machine that pulled millions of people out of poverty over the past century, and to demand it be replaced with a non-capitalist system that has proven only to generate poverty and death. Isn’t that just eating the seed corn while burning down the farm? Yet that is exactly what is being proposed by the U.N. and the various “Green lobbies.”

The Industrial Revolution and the wealth it has created have occurred because we taught ourselves to fish. The U.N. is a democratic body in which all nations, rich and poor, successful and unsuccessful, vote to be given a fish. If those nations ever want to be independent and not require subsidy, they must learn to fish. Giving them fish, in the form of foreign aid, has been enormously destructive. Calling it “climate aid” will not change the outcomes.

“Aid” has in many places actually destroyed the possibility for sustained economic growth by driving local producers, especially farmers, out of business. Such was the case in Micronesia, Bangladesh, India, Egypt, Haiti, Guatemala, Kenya, and many other places.

Some experts believe that food “aid” to India “may have been responsible for millions of Indians starving” Other studies have shown that malnutrition in Bangladesh actually rose as food aid to that country increased. In practically every case, the influx of “aid” has been immediately followed by the emergence of a massive, unproductive, parasitic government bureaucracy whose very existence undercuts the recipients’ ability for sustained economic growth.

If our largess has been used so sub-optimally by receiving regimes, how are we to know that this new demand for another few trillion dollars will not be so abused, as well?

It makes sense to teach them to fish, which we have been doing for some time. Since 1960, America, alone, has distributed to other nations in foreign aid well over $1.5 trillion in non-Department of Defense aid. At some point, enough must be deemed enough. Will sending $20 billion more to Indonesia, or $2 trillion more to the U.N. be enough? How will we know? How will they?

How does the scam end… ever?

Who's Afraid of a Gigaton?

The Global Carbon Project, a cohort of self-anointed “experts” intent on proving that the Klimate Kult fiction through which they generate their funding is real, tracks carbon output across nations and creates a carbon “budget” of what they feel is allowable for humanity. When tracked against economic output, the report, "CO2 emissions have been flat for a decade,” is fascinating. It proves that what our elites are doing is exactly the opposite of what they’d be doing if they believed the green agenda were needed, let alone critical. How dare they?

Using gigatons of CO2, by nation, the GCP provides a metric of this “pollution” by country with the obvious intent of shaming the miscreants other than not-Green China and not-Green India into reducing their output of the CO2 that is a fundamental requirement for life on earth. Red China is allowed by those preening themselves over greenhouse gasses (GHG) to skip the entire Paris “agreement” and just not worry about CO2 output. The same CO2 measurements are the primary focus of the Green Inquisition to bash the U.S.A. for ours. Let’s look at the numbers:

Not-green China, a command economy under communist rule, the economic model preferred by our elites and to which our ruling class has been shipping all our jobs and prosperity for decades, generated in 2021, per this report, 11.5 gigatons of CO2, while creating an economic output of $17,734,000,000,000, or emitting 1.3 pounds of CO2 per dollar of economic output. America, a (semi-)free market, capitalist economy under ostensibly democratic governance, generated in 2021, 5.0 GTon of CO2, while creating an economic output of $22,196,000,000,000, emitting 0.45 pounds of CO2 per dollar of economic output.

In other words, America generates 288 percent of the economic output of China while emitting 43 percent of China’s CO2. Six times the economic output per Gton of CO2. If the political establishment pushing green actually were pushing green and de-carbonization, they’d recognize that a higher standard of living at a lower CO2 cost (i.e. a more efficient and productive use of energy) is being attained under our political-economic model than under that of Red China.

 

If our self-proclaimed “green” elites actually believed in “Climate Change” and were concerned about CO2 emissions, not only would we not be offshoring our manufacturing and prosperity and future, our elites would be making the pitch to all the world to move their manufacturing to America, and to move the entire planet to a capitalist free-market economy as this model provably provides more economic output per GTon of CO2 than any other, higher living standards than any other model in human history, and reduces carbonization along the way.

How to do this is not to sign-on to a global minimum tax, but to allow all countries to compete for industry – and jobs and living standards – using tax and market policies anathema to our rulers but liberty-generating for the global middle classes the WEF/Davos crowd is trying to annihilate, while reducing CO2 impact for all.

No one wants to decrease their living standards. This is why immigrants are flocking to America rather than to China or Mexico. If the world wants to decrease GHG and “Global Warming,” and to not reduce living standards, we need to move industry to the country and economic system with the highest GDP per ton of CO2: the United States, and to return to a free-market economy so derided by globalist elites.

The upsides of moving industry back to, or to, America are two. If, against all current and historical data, the earth is being heated by human-emitted GHG, we can reduce the CO2 output while simultaneously increasing global economic production - and so global standards of living. If, as the data actually show, the earth is entering a cooling period, then we will have the necessary industry here to at least keep us warm.

Plus, the working class grows wealthier, which history shows leads to a higher level of concern about the environment.

The point here isn’t that CO2 is increasing or decreasing, that the planet is warming, cooling or in stasis. The point is that the elites, the same ones telling us we must reduce our energy usage to pre-industrial levels, are acting against – not just ignoring, but acting against – what they insist be done. Which means they don't believe it, either.

What they insist on is contributing to the increase of GHG and, per their models, to the global warming about which they only pretend to care as a control device over our liberty and prosperity, the destruction of which is their actual goal.

We aren’t talking about private jets or big houses or multiple houses or extravagances those of us working and providing them their wealth cannot afford due to the policies of these same rulers. We’re talking about the facts on the ground: moving industry to a command economy increases rather than decreases GHG emission per economic unit of measure. Reducing GHG while keeping or increasing global living standards means moving jobs and industry back to a free-market economy and away from command economies.

More than any other report, this GCP report ought to convince everyone paying attention that the U.N. is not kidding in its statement of their goal for the entire climate change hoax. As noted by Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change in Brussels, in 2015, the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”

“Changing the economic model” that has done more than any other in history to reduce poverty and improve global standards of living and, not coincidentally, to reduce greenhouse gasses better than any other, is the goal of our elites.

Their goal with “Climate Change” has nothing to do with saving the planet. Adding this report to the actions of our greenies proves that they are intent on adding to the global carbon output and increasing climate change while reducing our prosperity; as noted here early and often, to destroy the global Middle Classes.

These are the facts as presented by the GCP, an instrument of the Klimate Kult seemingly oblivious as to what its data show.

This has nothing to do with climate. It never has. It never will.

In Canada, the 'Climate' Is the Crisis

Last year at the big United Nations climate conference, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke about a town in British Columbia: “There was a town called Lytton. I say ‘was’, because on June 30 it burned to the ground.” The cause, and therefore the meaning, of the fire was clear to Trudeau: People are emitting greenhouse gases, raising temperatures, and the world will be plunged into fiery chaos... unless, under the wise guidance of “world leaders” at the U.N., we change our wicked ways.

“How many more signs do we need?" he asked in righteous exasperation. He warned that “what happened in Lytton can and has and will happen anywhere.” His ungrammatical prophecy is mysterious. Was he claiming that towns everywhere would burn to the ground, and already had? Perhaps he meant that every town on the planet was now as likely to burn to the ground as tiny Lytton—surrounded by vast forests, where summers are generally extremely hot and dry compared to most places in Canada.

In any case, the climate was in" crisis." As it always seems to be: It was in crisis back in 1989 when Canada hosted the first international climate conference, and in 1992 when Brian Mulroney’s government signed the U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change. It was still in crisis 2015 when Trudeau’s government signed the U.N.'s Paris Climate Accords.

2016: Trudeau smiles as he signs away Canadian sovereignty on Earth Day.

And in 2021, after three decades of international conferences and agreements, emissions plans, countless new regulations, a metastasizing climate bureaucracy, climate taxes, subsidies, and investments—100 billion dollars in climate spending over the last seven years alone—the climate was still in crisis.

It was still in crisis last week, of course, at the most recent U.N. conference. This time the Canadian sermon was delivered by the Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, once nicknamed “the Green Jesus of Montreal.” Instead of a fire out west, the sign this year was “the wrath of Hurricane Fiona” out east, proof of “the cost of climate inaction.”

A normal person might wonder whether the hurricane—or fire, or whatever—was perhaps a sign that all this stupendously expensive action was futile. Maybe the “world leaders” don’t really know how the climate works, or how to fix it? Maybe they don’t want to fix it. But, unfortunately, there are no normal people at climate conferences, and these questions go unasked.

How does the climate work? Greenhouse gases released by human activity are believed to play a role in the Earth's getting slightly warmer: roughly one degree Celsius since the industrial revolution, maybe one more by 2050. But there are other influences on the climate: ocean currents, the earth’s orbit tilt, the sun. None are fully understood. Greenhouse gases are natural components in the atmosphere, and the human contribution is small. (The earth naturally emits ten times as much carbon dioxide as we produce.) The climate, then, is the interaction of all these complex systems and their interaction with human activity. Which is also extremely complex, come to think of it: farming, road construction, air traffic, wars, migrations, hunting, garbage collection, elections, drug smuggling, etc. 

So the “world leaders” claim that just the right policies will control the purely human aspect of one factor in this hyper-complex scenario—and thereby control temperatures, decades later, within fractions of a degree. To articulate the claim is to see how absurd it is. Was the fire in Lytton a sign? Do we even know that climate change is having any effect on the behavior of fires in Canada? 

2022: there goes Prince Edward Island.

Back in 2016 there was a serious wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta. Elizabeth May, leader of Canada's Green Party leader—who maintains that her job is “to save the whole world”—declared that “of course” the fire was “due to greenhouse emissions.” Interestingly enough, Trudeau was more cautious: “There have always been fires, there have always been floods. Pointing to any one incident and saying, ‘This is because of that’ is neither helpful nor entirely accurate.” He may have been on to something.

Natural Resources Canada concedes that fires are caused by a “complex combination of influences.” It is “difficult to identify clearly whether any measurable changes in the patterns of wildland fire over the last few decades can be directly linked to climate change." Moreover, fires seem to be getting less destructive: “the annual amount of area burned seems to have decreased during the 20th century.” And in many large areas where fires have been declining in number and severity, this positive trend “might be the result of climate change causing greater amounts of precipitation over time in these regions” (emphasis added). 

So their position is that climate change may cause fires in some places, but there’s no strong evidence that it ever has. Meanwhile, it may also prevent fires, or limit the damage they cause. Is this what we're calling a crisis?

There were over 12,000 fires in 1989 and again in 1995. Over 14 million hectares burned in total. By contrast, in 2021, the year of the Lytton fire, there were fewer than 8,000 fires burning less than 5 million hectares. In 1825, the Great Miramichi Fire burned over 1.5 million hectares in New Brunswick. It’s believed to have been the largest fire in North American history. Was the climate in crisis back then? Maybe it was. Apparently, the crisis consists in very small changes in average temperatures over decades and centuries. That’s what Elizabeth May and other activists call a “destabilized climate.” By this standard, the climate has never been “stable.” The climate is the crisis.

This madness dominates public culture in much of the world, but it is especially potent in Canada. The official narrative sounds like it should be shouted by a homeless man on a street corner: The end is nigh, and the signs are everywhere. 

Concerning the Great Elec-Trick

The next time you hear about a proposed measure that promises to lower greenhouse gas emissions by millions of tons per year, consider the following response: “so what?” Many of us grow up thinking that “millions” represents a massive amount of whatever it is we’re counting. The tyranny of millions is a powerful tool when placed in the hands of the PR professionals who push climate change and other environmentally driven agendas.

Replacing incandescent lightbulbs in the United States with LEDs and other technologies that were more energy efficient was supposed to fight climate change by reducing electrical consumption and thus reducing the amount of fossil-fuel electricity generated and thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with fossil-fuel combustion. I doubt the actual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions associated with this program was in the millions on a net basis, since incandescent bulbs generated measurable and useful heat the LEDs do not. But it really doesn’t matter, because when you’re dealing with emissions in the billions of tons per year, a million tons here or there is hardly a blip on the radar.

We’re at the same point with the latest panacea: electric vehicles. Like LED light-bulbs, electrics will save the planet, at least according to dopey reporters and politicians. It’s a toss up whether electric vehicles are a net environmental benefit, however one feels about the "climate change" issue. You have to draw some pretty small boxes in order to make the case.  One box must encompass the electric vehicle alone, specifically its lack of a tailpipe. Without a tailpipe environmentalists can congratulate themselves for not directly introducing any air pollutants into the environment whilst cruising about town. The fact that the ultimate source of the energy involves a lot of fossil fuel combustion seems not to matter, or at least not nearly so much as it mattered during the Great Light Bulb Reformation.

Halfway there.

Nor does the tiny box consider all of the other environmental consequences associate with going electric. This includes items such as the cost of mining and refining the metals needed to make high capacity batteries, the amount of energy needed to do so, and the difficulty of disposing of the batteries when they reach the end of their useful life.

Embracing electric vehicles also necessitates a fanatical belief that unilateral action by America can significantly influence the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We cannot. Moving to electric vehicles, as it appears we are determined to do, will have no measurable effect on global greenhouse gas emissions. We’ve reduced so much that further reductions hardly matter. The future use of fossil fuels and the effect of their use on the environment is a discussion that involves China and India alone. Everyone else is merely a bystander.

For example, the once sane state of California recently passed a law that will ban the sale of gasoline powered vehicles within its borders starting in 2035. The California Air Resources Board praised the measure, saying “the proposal will substantially reduce air pollutants that threaten public health and cause climate change.” What exactly constitutes “substantial” reductions? After poking about the Energy Information Administration (EIA) a bit, it appears that making California all electric is pretty inconsequential from an environmental point of view, even if it can be done, which is very doubtful.

The law does not outlaw driving gasoline powered vehicles in the state, it merely bans their sales within the state. Like most draconian measures it’s unlikely that the ban will do much to change the mix of vehicles on the road, it will merely shift where people who chose to drive gasoline powered vehicles purchase them. Automobile dealerships in Oregon, Nevada and Arizona ought to send thank you notes to Sacramento.

While recognizing the implausibility of eliminating use of the internal combustion engine in California, it’s interesting to examine what would happen if such a thing were possible. First of all, California would need to come up with more power – a lot more power. According to EIA data the state consumes about 2,625 trillion Btu of energy annually producing electricity. Motor vehicles consume an additional 1,465 trillion Btu of energy from gasoline. If one is not using gasoline, the energy has to come from somewhere. The 1,465 trillion Btu represents around 21,000 megawatts of electrical generating capacity that would have to be added to the grid. That’s about as much energy as a mid-sized state like Illinois requires on a typical summer day.

Gonna need a lot more of these things.

Currently, wind and solar power represent about 20 percent of California’s energy portfolio, generating about 7,000 megawatts on average. If all the additional electrical demand is to be met by wind and solar, they would have to quadruple that portion of their portfolio. Possible? Maybe. Expensive? More and more eyesores? More and more bird strikes? More and more rolling blackouts? You bet.

Would the woke "sustainable" fantasy save planet Earth? Ignoring the fact that building and operating all those windmills and solar farms involves the use of fossil fuels, and also ignoring the fact that you’d have to have fossil-fired backup power because neither wind nor sunlight are reliable energy sources, you get a theoretical carbon dioxide emissions reduction of about 24 million tons per year.

Sure, 24 million tons sounds like a big number, but it’s really not. That’s about as much China emits every 12 hours. Or to look at it another way, given that global carbon dioxide emissions are about 36 billion tons per year, California’s fantasy would reduce that number by about 0.03 percent.

The simple fact is that if you really think we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it’s all about China. America could reduce her greenhouse gas emissions to zero and the amount of carbon dioxide would still continue to increase based on China’s past and projected rate of growth. Did you know, for example, that last year world wide coal consumption hit an all-time high? That didn’t happen because of coal-fired power plants in the United States. Our coal fired generation capacity continues to dwindle. The bulk of the coal is going to China and, to a lesser extent, India.

But we are talking California, so solving a make-believe problem using a pretend solution shouldn’t surprise anyone. As far as environmental policies go, California remains Fantasyland, and Tinkerbell rules.

Another Day, Another 'Climate' Disaster to Exploit

Nobody can say that climate change alarmists are inconsistent, at least when it comes to natural disasters. They are quicker to blame the latest bit of foul weather on global warming than an ambulance chasing lawyer is to whip out his business card when he meets someone with a back injury.

Mechanical engineer Bill Nye has been all over CNN and the internet explaining how climate change affects weather in terms of a mechanical engineer. It’s all about energy transfer for Bill, a direct, proportionally measurable phenomenon that the many and “always reliable” climate models predict with perfect accuracy! Or so he seems to believe. (Side note: if the models are SO accurate why do we have so many of them?)

Bill Nye.

Weather events are bit more complex than that. That’s why weather models are different beasts than climate models. There is another big difference between weather models and climate models: weather models tend to be right. They tend to be right because they are limited in scope, both in terms of geographical area and in terms of how far into the future they look. They also tend to be right because their accuracy is immediately demonstrable. Climate models, on the other hand, seek to define trends for the entirety of planet Earth decades into the future and beyond. They are largely unproven because the data sets used to attempt to validate them is so poor (remember “hide the decline”) and their scope so terrifically huge.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the alarmist crowd told us that the number of hurricanes and cyclones were increasing in number and intensity because of "global warming." They have largely abandoned that argument for the very good reason that it is demonstrably false. The actual record shows very little variation in the number and intensity of hurricanes between 1980 and the present. It’s difficult to comment on hurricane frequency before 1980 because global weather monitoring by satellite did not exist prior to 1980.

For a while the “proof” became the undeniable fact that the value of insurance claims associated with hurricane damage continues to rise. A-ha! The hurricanes must be getting stronger and causing more damage, and the reason they are getting stronger is because of global warming.

That’s a neat little argument, one that seems to make some sense at first. But somebody checked on the rate of new property development in hurricane-vulnerable locales. Sure enough, the increase in the value of insurance claims pretty well matched the increase in development. So it wasn’t that hurricanes are hitting harder, they are just getting more targets to hit. In terms of intensity, Ian was far below Andrew in 1992 and somewhat below Michael in 2018. Andrew made landfall with a wind speed nearly 150 mph, Michael with a wind speed of about 135 mph, while Ian topped out at around 130 mph.

The "science guy."

If it can be shown that we don’t have more hurricanes and a given hurricane’s potential to cause damage hasn’t really changed either, how can alarmists like Nye blame the devastation in Florida on "global warming"? Well, everything is possible if you just use your imagination. Nye parroted the latest party line: the rate at which today’s hurricanes are intensifying is increasing due to "climate change."

That is to say that as Ian came whipping up the Gulf of Mexico it was picking up more heat than it otherwise would have, thus transferring more energy, thus increasing the intensity of Ian beyond what nature intended.

The beauty of this argument is that it is unprovable. It’s an act of faith. If anything is a demonstrable exercise in chaos theory, it’s hurricane behavior. Yes, we can attempt to predict the track and growth of a given hurricane using some meteorological data, but the error bars surrounding those predictions are huge. Nye can no more prove that Ian would have behaved differently in a world with less greenhouse gases than he can disprove my assertion that Ian would have been much smaller in a world with fewer Bill Nyes.

Predictably, Nye chastised Republicans in Congress for not taking "climate change" seriously. Because why? Presumably because if everyone believes, really believes, hard enough in "climate change" then Tinkerbell will appear to solve the problem. What exactly does Nye expect Republicans in Congress to do? Close coal-fired power plants? We closed a bunch of them. Subsidize new wind and solar plants? Been subsidizing both for decades now. Push automakers into building more electric vehicles? We can take that one off the punch-list as well. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Been doing that for years.

Worldwide coal consumption is surging, with 2021 coming in just short of the record set in 2014. Any discussion of greenhouse gas reductions starts and pretty much ends with China and India. It’s silly on one level to wag a finger at Republicans in Congress for not believing that climate change is or will be a crisis. It’s beyond absurd when one considers that there is literally nothing Congress can do about the crisis if it exists.

Coming to save the day!

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been roundly criticized for solely talking about climate in terms of Florida’s infrastructure needs. Coastal erosion, whatever the cause, is a problem in Florida and DeSantis is spending money to address it. But he won’t pay due homage to the golden calf in the room: "global warming" idolatry. He won’t do penance for America's prosperity by blaming humans and their wicked ways. He won’t address the root causes of the problem! How could he address the root causes of this supposed problem? Short of ordering the Florida Air National Guard to bomb the snot out of Chinese coal-fired power plants it's unclear what he could possibly do. And presumably Xi wouldn’t take too kindly to that solution.

Ian was a disaster, as large hurricanes that make landfall always have been and always will be. We should all offer up a prayer for those Floridians who lost property and loved ones. But those who try once again to exploit the disaster to achieve their own selfish ends deserve nothing but our contempt.