Journalists, experts, and elected officials are today blaming heat wave deaths, forest fires, and electricity shortages in New York, California, and Texas on climate change, but the underlying cause of those events is lack of air conditioning, lack of electricity, and the failure to properly manage forests, not marginal changes to temperatures.

It’s true that there have been more heat waves in the United States since 1960, and that higher temperatures dry out the dead wood in forests, contributing to a greater area burned by forest fires. “Climate dries the [wood] fuels out and extends the fire season from 4-6 months to nearly year-round,” US Forest Service scientist Malcolm North explained to me last summer.

But what determines whether people die in heat waves is whether or not they have air conditioning, not whether temperatures rose to 111° instead of 109°. Proof of that comes from the fact that heat-related deaths declined in the US by 50% to 75% since 1960 thanks entirely to air conditioning, even as heat waves grew in frequency, intensity, and length.

What determines whether a fire in a forest is high-intensity or low-intensity is the amount of wood fuel. Climate change is “not the cause of the intensity of the [mountain forest] fires,” stressed North. “The cause of that is fire suppression and the existing debt of wood fuel.”

And what determines whether or not there is enough electricity is whether there are sufficient “baseload,” reliable power plants and fuels, not marginally higher use of air conditioners. The people who manage electricity grids knew perfectly well that it could be hot last summer, hot this summer, and that a cold snap like the one that occurred in Texas in February was likely, since worse cold snaps had occurred in the past.

The main reason there aren’t enough reliable power plants is because progressive activists, scientists, and journalists successfully persuaded policymakers to shut them down, not build them, or not operate them.

Yesterday, the guys over at Powerline blog had this interesting little story on the practical realities as to why “renewable” energy sources like wind and solar power will NEVER generate the power needed to supply the vast electrical demands of the United States, notwithstanding all the proclamations and pledges made by moronic politicians chasing after “green votes”.

The bottom-line issue comes down to a simple calculation of the area of landmass needed to produce a specific measure of generated electricity when you employ different methods of generating that electricity.

When efficiency is measured as a function of landmass use, the form of electrical generation that is far and away the best method is nuclear power. The chart found in the Powerline story shows that when “power density” is measured as watts per square meter of land used, nuclear power produces 2000 watts, while solar power produces 10 watts of electricity per square meter of land used, and wind power produces 1 watt of electricity per square meter.

Part of the variable here is that nuclear power runs at a constant generating capacity 24/7/365, and besides nuclear fuel, the only natural resource needed is a supply of water. //

Once the math is done with regard to the relationship of the various forms of power which can be used to generate electricity, the next relatively simple mathematical calculation is to determine how much landmass will be required to generate enough electricity from wind and/or solar power to meet the electricity needs of the United States over a given period of time. That is where the problems begin.

Setting aside for the moment the question of capital costs and what that might mean for electricity rates to be paid by consumers, if the calculation is limited solely to a determination of how many square miles of wind farms would be needed to power the electrical needs of the United States such that the burning of fossil fuels to turn water into steam that drives steam turbine generators, the answer is a landmass the size of California — times 2. You take something akin to California, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona, cover it from top-to-bottom and side-to-side with giant wind turbines, and the rest of the country can run their air conditioners, microwave ovens, and electric power-washers without introducing another molecule of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from putting a match to fossil fuel. //

To accomplish the goals staked out in these policy prescriptions means devoting massive amounts of a scarce natural resource — land — to the re-invention of electrical generation capacity in the United States. I consider land as a “scare natural resource,” because the last time I checked, there isn’t any more of it being created. We “consume” the land when we cover it with solar panels and can’t make any other use of it.

Right now, the major metropolitan communities on the coasts are not served by electrical transmission lines from Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and Oklahoma. All of that infrastructure would need to be built, as well.

Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources is a geographic impossibility based on current technology. Replacing fossil fuels with nuclear power could likely be accomplished with currently available technology.

France has done it. France reduced its fossil fuel consumption for energy from 96% in 1966 to under 45% in 2018. In the same time period, it increased nuclear-generated energy to 49%, a program which began in the early 1970s as a result of the “1973 Oil Crisis” and the recognition by France that it produces no oil and has no oil reserves among its natural resources. //

bluestardad
3 months ago
Massive solar farms will wipe out large areas of vegetation, which converts CO2 into Oxygen and water vapor. Strike one, enviro-NAZIs. Solar panels primarily come from China because they are about the only country willing to strip mine for the raw materials to make them. Strip mining is a wasteful method and creates all kinds of ecological damage. Strike two. Solar panels only produce electricity during sunny days. Battery storage requires climate controlled facilities to house them and keep them at peak performance, and even then they have relatively short operating lifetimes. Plus battery manufacturing also requires mining for rare earth minerals (think more strip mining.) Strike three //

NickSJ
3 months ago
Notice that greens fanatically oppose the only two reliable non-CO2 producing sources of electricity - nuclear and hydro. //

coyotewise NickSJ
3 months ago
China would not get huge revenues for the rare earth material with either hydro or nuclear. Biden loves him some China, and the better they do the better he and Hunter do.

Liberty, a North American oilfield company, released a video on Thursday slamming North Face for its hypocrisy.

The outdoor clothing company often boasts that it is an environmentally friendly company that recycles and reuses textile materials to create its gear. North Face even went so far as to deny a different oil and gas company its order in the name of committing to be more “green,” but Liberty CEO Chris Wright says the popular company is mostly talk.

“I went through North Face’s website of wide-ranging products, and I failed to find a single product that wasn’t made out of oil and gas,” he said.

Summary.
A growing number of insurance companies are cutting ties with the fossil fuel companies they used to cover. New insight from data analytics firm Verisk finds that over 30 years, insurers sustained roughly $60 billion in onshore and offshore large risk losses from fossil fuel companies, with only another $30 million or so coming from other companies. The author urges a push toward renewables, examining the obstacles leading to industry hesitancy and how it might overcome them. //

Late last year, Lloyd’s of London announced plans to stop selling insurance for some types of fossil fuel companies by 2030. In the world of insurance, it was a huge move: the centuries-old institution not only took a clear stand in the industry’s debate on climate change, it also cast doubt on the value of the business it intends to give up. And Lloyd’s isn’t the only one with concerns about the future of fossil fuel. Insurers and reinsurers around the world are grappling with issues related to both climate change and the impact of energy transition on their portfolios. Some have made the same commitment that Lloyd’s did, and others are likely to follow.

Here on the East Coast, we’re anticipating the arrival of trillions of periodical Brood X cicadas.

So far, their emergence from a 17-year underground slumber has been described as a “plague” and an “invasion.”

The worst example of coverage, however, is the media's attempt to normalize human consumption of cicadas. Gross. //

A WIRED article posited, “Brood X offers something beyond noise and wonder. Namely, it offers a source of free-range, no-cost, eco-friendly protein.” //

The University of Maryland and the Cicadamaniacs do not advocate eating cicadas without first consulting with your doctor. While many people do eat cicadas, there is no guarantee that they are safe for every person to eat. As with all foods, it is possible that certain individuals will have allergic reactions to substances within the cicada. //

Many on the left are environmental preservationists who believe nature should be left untouched and undisturbed. So why are many of them entertaining cicadas recipes? Talk about inconsistency...

My fellow Americans also in the path of Brood X cicadas: Let’s leave them alone and allow nature to run its course.

one Australian media figure, in particular, was particularly incensed at what he viewed as young folks being spoiled and brainwashed and took to the airwaves to voice his frustrations over the hypocrisy of those young climate activists, many of who are actually pampered snobs being shamelessly used and carefully manipulated by adults who should know better.

Video of that segment in which the man – conservative commentator Alan Jones – reads a piece called “Growing up” that someone sent to him going off on Thunberg and other youth climate change activists //

“To all the school kids going on strike for climate change, you’re the first generation who’ve required air conditioning in every classroom. You want TV in every room and your classes are all computerized. You spend all day and night on electronic devices.

More than ever you don’t walk or ride bikes to school, but you arrive in caravans of private cars that choke suburban roads and worsen rush-hour traffic. You’re the biggest consumers of manufactured goods ever. And update perfectly good, expensive, luxury items to stay trendy. Your entertainment comes from electric devices.

Furthermore, the people driving your protests are the same people who insist on artificially inflating the population growth through immigration, which increases the need for energy, manufacturing, and transport. The more people we have, the more forest and bushland we clear, the more of the environment that’s destroyed.

How about this? Tell your teachers to switch off the aircon, walk or ride to school, switch off your devices and read a book, make a sandwich instead of buying manufactured fast food.

Republican California Rep. Darrell Issa asked Kerry a very direct question about pipeline transportation.

“Isn’t it true the pipelines are more carbon-delivery efficient than trains or trucks or other forms of delivery? If you could answer just that limited question,” asked Issa.

“Yeah, that is true,” Kerry said. “I, I think that is true, but it doesn’t mean necessarily you want to be adding another line when there are other alternatives.”

“But is it better than train, and better than that, yes it is,” he added.

That pipelines were better for the environment was already documented even before the Biden administration killed the pipeline’s construction, but getting this admission from the Biden administration itself cements two things. One, that the Biden administration went against the science, and two, that they knew they were going against the science and didn’t care.

This puts the thousands of jobs killed by the Biden administration into a much darker perspective, knowing that it killed these jobs under false pretenses. It’s made even worse by the fact that the Biden administration would say little to nothing about it with Biden himself literally walking away in silence when asked about the sacrifices he forced Americans to make with the cancelation of the pipeline.

Human Progress, a project that provides evidence from individual scholars, academic institutions, and international organizations, took issue with Frizzell’s basic premise, saying dramatic improvements in human well-being throughout much of the world.

“Children do not strain the world’s resources,” the organization said on Twitter. “In fact, the opposite is true: each new child is correlated with an increase in resource abundance.” //

Gad Saad
@GadSaad
I apologize to @GretaThunberg, to @AOC, and to @JohnKerry for having had children. I will try to starve them to offset their carbon footprint. Again, my apologies. I’ll do better. @voguemagazine

Snopes has published an article that claims that Apocalypse Never is being “challenged by scientists he cites.” The author, Alex Kasprak, claims scientists “say their work either refutes or is irrelevant to the broader points Shellenberger makes in his book.”

In fact, Kasprak quotes scientists who confirm several key claims of Apocalypse Never:

The most dramatic confirmation is around my debunking of the myth that humans are causing a “sixth mass extinction.” As background, Facebook censored my article announcing Apocalypse Never in part because an activist scientist writing for the web site Climate Feedback insisted humans were, in fact, causing a mass extinction. Kasprak quotes a scientist who admits that it would “require current rates to continue for several tens of thousands of years to reach the 75% species-level extinction characteristic of the ‘Big Five’” mass extinctions. //

Kasprak either didn’t read Apocalypse Never, didn’t understand it, or chose to deliberately misrepresent it. //

10. Kasprak uncritically quotes a scientist falsely asserting that “the industrial food system is effectively a poverty-generating machine.”
    Industrial agriculture has played a major role in lifting nations out of poverty by reducing the share of the population that must farm from over 80 percent in poor nations to just two percent in rich ones. The notion that the industrialization of agriculture drove economic growth is only controversial among Malthusian scientists, several of whom are debunked in Apocalypse Never, and in ways that Kasprak never addresses. //

11. Kasprak falsely suggests there might be some better way to determine whether or not natural disasters have become “worse” than death toll or property damage, even though that is how IPCC and others define disasters.

With these rising prices, farmers are making real money for the first time in years, and most Americans want farmers to earn a fair living for their sweat and hard work. Grain prices affect the cost of beef, pork, turkeys, and chickens. It is simple economics: higher grain prices result in higher meat prices. What the US government should be doing is incentivizing crop production, not curtailing it. We should also be expanding US cattle and hog herds and turkey and chicken flocks in order to keep food prices stable while also exporting to meat-importing countries. Taking even marginal land out of agricultural production is a mistake. [Note: a lot of land previously considered to be “marginal” has been improved for productive cultivation over the years through diligent hard work.]

Finally, other grain exporting countries like Brazil, Argentina, and Australia will be enticed to plant more acres to meet world demand if the US sets aside additional acreage in CRP. Maybe that is one unspoken purpose behind the Hologram’s CRP push – another America Last policy. Good for foreign farmers; not so much for American farmers. And if the Hologram regime’s 30×30 Plan (and CRP) goal is to help “halt climate change” in response to the “climate crisis panic porn” being purveyed by CNN by taking US acreage out of production, how is that goal achieved if other countries merely make up the difference?

Okay, everyone, today is Earth Day, which means one thing: WE ARE DOOMED!

Hey, don’t scream at me; this is the consensus of the scientific community. Welllllll — in actuality, it is the consensus of the media covering the scientific community, but this is serious stuff!

As long as you don’t analyze their claims.

Beginning from the very first Earth Day in 1970 there are issues. Much of the propaganda sermonizing coming from that event concerned us freezing to death from the inevitable approaching ice age. Also, famine was due to wipe out billions by the end of the decade, pollution would block the sun, acid rain would kill all plant life, and we’d run out of oil…uh, 30 years ago. Now, some may want to overstate the fact that the founder of the event, Ira Einhorn, murdered his girlfriend, but it is important to understand that he lived by example — he did compost her body. //

Part of the reason we’ll be heating up is due to an increase in clouds which will have heat-trapping effects. Another reason we’ll be heating up is there will be fewer clouds, and we will roast in the sunlight. Unless – an increase in clouds reflect that sunlight and shade the planet. OR, we’ll see a decrease in clouds altogether. which means they will NOT be trapping the heat nor reflecting the sun, which is either bad or good, depending. Truthfully, when it comes to discussing this subject it is advisable to just avoid any mention of clouds at all, or you will just make the doomsday prophets all kinds of cranky.

The Earth’s rotation will become affected by GW. We just cannot be sure if it will start turning faster or slowing down. Whichever happens, just be sure it’s bad.

Obviously, as we heat up it means there will be less snow, but that means fewer avalanches. Except, we are also promised mountain regions will also experience more avalanches. Not sure how the math works out on that one. Probably best to just hope for the best.

In his review of my new book, Apocalypse Never, at Yale Climate Connections, Peter Gleick accuses me of mischaracterizing environmentalism and misrepresenting climate science. He argues that I construct strawmen, promote nuclear energy above other energies, and engage in ad hominem (personal) attacks.

In fact, Gleick mischaracterizes Apocalypse Never, which accurately reflects the best available science and promotes energy progress, not nuclear to the exclusion of other sources, without making personal attacks.

Most troubling, Gleick writes, “if Malthusians are wrong, all they would have done is made the world a better place.” But in Apocalypse Never I show that, for Malthusians, making the world a “better place” has meant letting the poor starve, keeping poor nations dependent on wood fuel, and diverting World Bank funding from dams, roads, and fertilizer for development to charitable endeavors like solar panels for rural villagers aimed at making poverty sustainable. //

What we differ on is how to get there. In Apocalypse Never I show why poor people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America will enjoy higher standards of living, and protect the natural environment, by doing the exact same thing Americans and Europeans have done, which is to industrialize, urbanize, build flood control systems, modernize agriculture, and move up the energy ladder, from wood and dung to hydroelectric dams and fossil fuels to nuclear. 

I further argue that, if we continue to develop in these ways, deaths from natural disasters will continue to decline, food surpluses will continue to rise, and global carbon emissions will likely peak and decline soon, preventing temperatures from rising more than three degrees centigrade over pre-industrial levels.

Gleick disagrees and defends the Malthusian notion that future food surpluses are highly uncertain due to climate change, and argues that I ignore such risks. To get to the bottom of the disagreement, we need to review the best available science, as well as the history of Malthusian ideology. //

My point is, again, that human development and disaster preparedness massively outweigh whatever increase there’s been in hurricane wind speed, the length of forest fire season, or modestly more precipitation. “What most determines how vulnerable various nations are to flooding,” I note, “depends centrally on whether they have modern water and flood control systems, like my home city of Berkeley, California, or not, like the Congo.” //

What I note — again – is that however much climate change might be making extreme weather worse, it hasn’t made up for the huge improvements in resilience which have made natural disasters better. Deaths from natural disasters have declined over 90 percent in the last century, and there has been no increase in the cost of natural disasters once greater wealth and development are accounted for. //

In truth, a major theme of Apocalypse Never, is that what matters is the direction of travel. We should want to move up the energy ladder — from wood and dung to hydro-electric dams, liquified petroleum gas (to replace wood and dung), natural gas (to replace coal), and then, yes, nuclear energy — and not down the energy ladder, which is what Malthusian environmentalists advocate. //

Gleick writes, “Shellenberger no doubt believes in, and supports, the goal of a better future. So do environmental scientists, activists, and any decent human.” The question is what we mean by “better future.” For Malthus and Malthusian scientists, a better future is one where there are fewer people. “The land in Ireland is infinitely more peopled than in England,” Malthus famously wrote, “and to give full effect to the natural resources of the country, a great part of the population should be swept from the soil.”

Conservationists and environmentalists defend Malthus by claiming that he wrote his famous book when it was still too early to know that the industrial revolution would radically increase food production. Malthus came of age in what historians call the “advanced organic economy,” which, due to its reliance on renewables, namely wood fuel and waterwheels, “condemned the majority of the population to poverty” for inherently physical reasons, notes Malthus biographer Robert Mayhew. //

Did Malthus’ ideas have any impact on the real world?

They did. British elites used Malthus’ ideas to justify letting one million people starve to death during the Great Irish Famine. To this day, when people think of the Great Famine, they tend to focus on the fungus that killed potatoes and overlook the fact that, between 1845 and 1849, Ireland exported food, including beef, to England. Irish families had to sell their pigs in order to pay the rent, even as their children were starving.

Malthus taught the British to blame the Irish. “The cheapness of this nourishing root [potatoes],” Malthus wrote, “joined to the ignorance and barbarism of the [Irish] people, have encouraged marriage to such a degree that the population has pushed much beyond the industry and present resources of the country.”

Thirty years later, the British governor-general of India argued that the Indian population “has a tendency to increase more rapidly than the food it raises from the soil.” Later he claimed the “limits of increase of production and of the population have been reached.”

Then, between 1942 and 1943, as India produced food and manufactured goods for the British war effort, local food shortages emerged. Food imports could have alleviated the crisis, but Prime Minister Winston Churchill refused to allow it. Why? “Much of the answer must lie in the Malthusian mentality of Churchill and his key advisors,” concludes Mayhew.

“Indians are breeding like rabbits and being paid a million a day by us for doing nothing about the war,” Churchill claimed, falsely. Partly as a result of his decisions, three million people died in the Bengali famine of 1942 to 1943, which was three times the death toll of the Great Irish Famine.

After World War II, American conservationists adopted the thinly-veiled Malthusian idea that making the world a better place involved letting poor people in poor nations starve to death. Top academic institutions helped make Malthusian ideas mainstream.

In 1972, an NGO called the Club of Rome published “The Limits to Growth,” a report concluding that the planet was on the brink of ecological collapse, which The New York Times covered on its front page. “The most probable result,” the report declared, “will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.” The collapse of civilization was “a grim inevitability if society continues its present dedication to growth and ‘progress.’” //

Ehrlich and Holdren argued that the world likely did not have enough energy to support the development aspirations of the world’s poor. “Most plans for modernizing agriculture in less-developed nations call for introducing energy-intensive practices similar to those used in North America and western Europe—greatly increased use of fertilizers and other farm chemicals, tractors, and other machinery, irrigation, and supporting transportation networks—all of which require large inputs of fossil fuels,” they noted.

A better way, they said, was “much greater use of human labor and relatively less dependence on heavy machinery and manufactured fertilizers and pesticides.” Such labor-intensive farming “causes far less environmental damage than does energy-intensive Western agriculture,” they claimed. In other words, the “secret” to “alternative farming methods” was for small farmers in poor nations to remain small farmers. //

In 1981, the Indian economist Amartya Sen published Poverty and Famines showing that famines are not caused by a lack in food, and occur primarily in times of war, political oppression, and the collapse of food distribution, not production, systems. Sen won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1998.

By 1987, demographers knew the number of humans added annually to the global population had reached its peak. Seven years later, the U.N. held its last Family Planning meeting. Between 1996 and 2006, United Nations family planning spending declined 50 percent.

As it became clear that the growth in the global birth rate had peaked, Malthusian thinkers started to look to climate change as a replacement apocalypse for overpopulation and resource scarcity. The influential Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider embraced the Malthusianism of John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, and he invited them to educate his scientists. //

Gleick defends Holdren and the Ehrlichs as part of his broader defense of Malthusianism. Gleick claims they did not claim fossil fuels were scarce in the 1970s, and points to a book published in 2003 where Holdren said, “What environmentalists mainly say on this topic is not that we are running out of energy, but that we are running out of environment…”

But I make this exact point in Apocalypse Never. I show how Malthusians have used climate change to shift from claiming fossil fuels were scarce to claiming that the environment was scarce. “Where just a few years earlier, Malthusians had demanded limits on energy consumption by claiming fossil fuels were scarce; now they demanded limits by claiming the atmosphere was scarce.”

The Malthusians significantly modified Malthus. Where Malthus warned that overpopulation would result in a scarcity of food, Malthusians in the 1960s and 1970s warned that energy abundance would result in overpopulation, environmental destruction, and societal collapse. Where in 1977, Ehrlich and Holdren proposed international control of the “development, administration, conservation and distribution of all natural resources,” many Malthusian scientists, green NGOs, and U.N. agencies today similarly seek control over energy, food, and water policies in developing nations in the name of climate change and biodiversity.

In his 1989 book, The End of Nature, Bill McKibben argued that humankind’s impact on the planet would require the same Malthusian program developed by Ehrlich and Commoner in the 1970s. Economic growth would have to end. Rich nations must return to farming and transfer wealth to poor nations so they could improve their lives modestly but not industrialize. And the human population would have to shrink to between 100 million and 2 billion. //

It is notable that Malthusians have long opposed nuclear energy not because it is dangerous but it eliminates the scarcity and pollution problems that Malthusians ostensibly are so worried about.

Scientists had known since the early 20th Century that nuclear energy was the key not just to bountiful fertilizer, water, and food but also zero pollution and a radically reduced environmental footprint. Nuclear energy thus created a serious problem for Malthusians and anyone else who wanted to argue that energy, fertilizer, and food were scarce. Some Malthusians argued that the problem with nuclear was that it produced too much cheap and abundant energy.

“If a doubling of the state’s population in the next twenty years is encouraged by providing the power resources for this growth,” wrote the Sierra Club’s executive director, opposing Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, “[California’s] scenic character will be destroyed.”

Behind an advocacy ostensibly motivated by concerns for the environment lies a very dark view of human beings. “It’d be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of cheap, clean, and abundant energy,” said the Malthusian advocate of renewable energy, Amory Lovins, in a 1970 interview, “because of what we would do with it.” Ehrlich agreed. “In fact, giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”

And most of all they stoked fears of the bomb. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell argued that “nothing is more likely to lead to an H-bomb war than the threat of universal destitution through over-population.” They called the growing population in developing nations a “population explosion.” And Ehrlich titled his book, The Population Bomb. //

In Apocalypse Never, I point to a pattern. Malthusians raise the alarm about a resource or environmental problems and then attack the obvious technical solutions. Malthus had to attack birth control to predict overpopulation. Holdren and Ehrlich had to claim fossil fuels were scarce to oppose the extension of fertilizers and industrial agriculture to poor nations and to raise the alarm over famine. And climate activists today have to attack natural gas and nuclear energy, the main drivers of lower carbon emissions, in order to warn of climate apocalypse.

In his review of Apocalypse Never, Gleick does something similar. He suggests that I am wrong that hydro-electric dams, flood control systems, and nuclear power plants will allow human societies to both mitigate and adapt to climate change. I believe Gleick is wrong to do so, in both senses of the term “wrong.” I’m sad about that, not angry.

In the end, as I argue in the last chapter of Apocalypse Never, Malthusian scientists, activists, and journalists are lost souls seeking false gods. They are individuals in the grip of religion without knowing it. That’s not a personal attack. It’s a criticism of an ideology that has become the dominant religion of supposedly secular people.

One should bear in mind that, from 1 kilogram of enriched uranium, present-day light water reactors (LWRs) can produce the energy equivalent of roughly 150,000 kilograms of coal. A uranium-breeder reactor can derive from 1 kg of natural uranium the equivalent of over 1 million kilograms of coal. A similar ratio applies to thorium in a thorium breeder reactor. //

Could nuclear power be expanded rapidly enough to eliminate the use of fossil fuels for electricity generation in the foreseeable future? //

In a speech on national television in March 1974 French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer announced an ambitious plan to make nuclear-generated electricity the foundation of the nation’s energy system. He declared “France has not been favored by nature in energy resources…. There is almost no petroleum on our territory, we have less coal than England and Germany and much less gas than Holland…. Our great chance is electrical energy of nuclear origin…. We will give priority to electricity and in electricity to nuclear electricity.”

Following the Messmer Plan, France’s nuclear power expansion proceeded at a rapid pace. During the 1980s, 44 new nuclear power stations went on line – an average of 4 per year. Nearly all were standardized in design, with two basic types producing 900 and 1300 MW of electric power each. Standardization reduced costs greatly, and construction times for most of the plants were between 5 and 7 years.

In less than 15 years the percentage of electricity generated from nuclear plants rose from about 7% percent in 1975 to over 75% in 1990. //

The irony of the situation is that the environmentalist movement is to a significant extent responsible for the continued dependence on coal and gas power plants.

It is quite conceivable that we would have had practically CO2-free electricity today if it had not been for the intense campaigns against nuclear energy, mounted continuously for over half a century in the United States and Western Europe.

Although there are good reasons to be concerned about the safety of nuclear power plants – reasons we will discuss – the political opposition to nuclear energy has on the whole been characterized by ideology and hysteria rather than rationality.

In my view the rational response to the accidents in Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011) would have been to demand fundamental innovations in the design and operation of nuclear power plants – such as those I shall describe later – rather than attempting to block the development of nuclear energy altogether. //

Unfortunately, in the transition to commercial electricity production by nuclear reactors, most of the innovative reactor designs developed in the early period, were dropped in favor of a single basic type: the light water reactor (LWR). Here the starting point in the West was the successful US Navy program to develop reactors to power submarines. Other reactor types, such as so-called fast breeder reactors, have so far played only a marginal role.

In retrospect the fixation on LWRs as the mainstay of civilian nuclear energy, to the virtual exclusion of other types, was a mistake. The main reason was cost-cutting in the field of R&D, more than intrinsic advantages of LWR reactors. Through lack of developed alternatives, nuclear energy became stuck with the limitations of LWRs. We need to correct this.

Elon Musk may be trading places with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos these days for the title of the world’s richest person by net worth, but the Tesla and SpaceX CEO also holds a unique place among his fellow billionaires. Based on estimates from anthropologists from Indiana University, Elon Musk may very well be one of the billionaires with the smallest carbon footprint.

a New England government official revealed the left’s endgame in fighting the climate in an online meeting he assumed would remain private. Massachusetts Undersecretary for Climate Change David Ismay participated in a meeting with the Vermont Climate Council back in January, where he admitted that when it comes to the big climate “offenders” in their region, there are no bad guys left to break. Ismay went on to say that now the only ones left to “break” are the people.

I know one thing that we found in our analysis is that 60% of our emissions come from – as I have it started to say you and me, except you guys are in Vermont – 60% of our emissions come from residential heating and passenger vehicles. Let me say that again …60% of our emissions that need to be reduced come from you, the person on your street, the senior on fixed-income. Right now there is no bad guy left, at least in Massachusetts, to point the finger at and turn the screws on and no break their will so they stop emitting. That’s you . We have to break your will. //

Herein lies the problem with climate policy specifically, and progressivism in general. Everyone is on board as long as the “big guys” are getting screwed. What the public at large does not know is that progressive government has no intention of stopping at the big guy. They know that small business and the middle class make up the majority of American life, currently. They know that any significant change to American life must be done on the backs of those people. This is the terrifying truth that they dare not utter out loud, because even they know they are advocating for more poverty, more struggle, and less prosperity for the people who pay their salaries. //

Poor people don’t matter. Small business doesn’t matter. Even as all these people are surely using walls, and insulation, and heat, and electricity, they simultaneously are plotting to make sure no one else has those privileges. //

The issue isn’t climate change. The issue is changing human nature and under our Constitution, no man has the right to force changes upon our free will. If people vote for heat it’s because they like being warm in the winter. The will of the voter is intended to be the most powerful voice in the nation. As with the Time article, here we see unabashed, admitted proof that there is a concerted effort to circumvent the will of voters.

These people despise the existence of anyone outside their elitist bubbles. That’s all you need to know.

Democrats love green energy but mostly because it allows them to put on the air that they’re somehow far more environmentally conscious than their opponents and thus if you’re concerned about the future of the planet and thus mankind, voting for them is the only way to save the world.

The truth is actually a lot more political. Democrats will do things that hurt the environment if it gives off the impression that they’re helping it. For instance, the claim that the Keystone XL Pipeline is damaging isn’t proven, and in fact, leaks from the pipeline are far less damaging and risky to the environment than the transportation of crude oil via truck or train. That’s not to mention the amount of CO2 that wouldn’t be pumped into the air through the vehicles transporting the oil from Canada into America.

But let’s take a look at the “environmentally safe” options Democrats keep saying are going to save our planet and see just how good for the environment they are.

The most significant part of the bill for the rapidly overheating planet is a requirement for U.S. companies to cut production and use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, by 85 percent over the next 15 years. HFCs — which are commonly used in refrigerators and air-conditioning systems — were supposed to be a safe alternative to chlorofluorocarbons, the chemicals that deplete the ozone layer. But scientists discovered that when released into the atmosphere, HFCs are 1000 to 3000 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat. They are now the fastest-growing greenhouse gas in the world.

HFCs are regulated internationally by the Kigali Amendment, a 2016 update of the ozone-protecting Montreal Protocol, which was enacted in the late-1980s. Although over 100 nations have ratified the amendment — thus promising to cut global HFC emissions 80 percent or more by 2050 — the big emitters like the U.S., China, and India haven’t yet signed onto the effort.

Mike Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
The New York Times is claiming in a long, front-page story today that recent fires killed "countless ancient redwoods" in California

The claim is false and should be immediately corrected

There is no evidence that the fire killed even a single ancient redwood tree //

As Shellenberger wrote back in August:

But every school child who has visited one of California’s redwood parks knows from reading the signs at the visitor’s center and in front of the trailheads that old-growth redwood forests need fire to survive and thrive.

Heat from fire is required for the release and germination of redwood seeds, and to burn up the woody debris on the forest floor. The thick bark on old-growth redwood trees provides evidence of many past fires.

AOC and the hard-left want the very socialistic Green New Deal to be pushed through so badly they’ll lie their heads off to make it happen and if it means scaring the population into compliance then so be it.

You’ll never see AOC show up to debate anyone about it. It’s clear the ramifications of the Green New Deal would scare the population even more than the left’s climate scaremongering. Better to tell everyone that we’re about to hit the point of no return and make them climate issue voters.

Only once again, the deadline’s come and gone, and everything is great. The only thing burning up is the left’s climate narrative.

Florida’s highways have frequently been built on a foundation of chicanery and political foolishness. //

now we may soon see Florida roads that are built on something new: radioactive waste from phosphate mines.

When phosphate companies turn their mined rock into fertilizer, they produce about five tons of phosphogypsum waste to every ton of fertilizer. Since 1989, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has banned using that phosphogypsum waste for construction projects or anything else because it exceeds the level of radioactivity regarded as safe for humans.