I & I Editorial BoardOur friend Steven Hayward, late of the great Power Line blog, university professor and incisive thinker, wrote a compelling essay last week about “The Nadir of the Climate Change Movement.” If anyone should know about the state of global warming hysteria, it would be Hayward. Here’s how he begins his argument:
The prevailing winds are blowing not toward more windmills but toward common sense on energy.
https://www.civitasinstitute.org/research/the-nadir-of-the-climate-change-movement
It is possible that the Trump administration is going to deal the death blows to the long-running climate change hysteria and government hostility to fossil fuels, not just in the United States but around the globe.
The Trump administration has moved well beyond merely supporting increased oil and natural gas production. It has also launched steps to dismantle the foundations of anti-energy climate policy, in particular, a proposed reversal of the so-called ‘endangerment finding’ that gave the EPA jurisdiction to regulate greenhouse gases, which were never explicitly included in any of the various Clean Air Acts passed over the last 50 years. Trump’s EPA is also proposing to revise the EPA’s flawed ‘social cost of carbon’ analysis, which is used to justify costly green energy schemes.
Is this the moment we’ve been looking for for nearly three decades? Is climate virtue signaling finally wearing out? Are the activists who have blocked traffic, shut down international airports, vandalized priceless artworks, slashed tires, set fires, clashed with police, nagged, ranted and harassed going to fade into the background, maybe even do something productive rather than destructive? Is the litigation slowing? Are politicians looking for another grift instead? Will the media drop its constant harping and screeching? Can we expect some honesty from researchers?
Hayward doubts “the climatistas know what’s about to hit them” as “the new Trump team” goes “straight at the heart of the entire climate change framework.” He points out the “economic flim-flam” of the social cost of carbon, and reminds us that “that fossil fuels are responsible for launching” modern medicine, telecommunications, air and rail travel, and automobiles, innovations that are critical to the functioning of an advanced existence.
He also mentions that:
Despite billions spent for climate crisis agitprop, the backing of a compliant media, the surrender of much of big business (including many fossil fuel companies), and the endless braying of opportunist politicians, opinion surveys consistently find that the public does not buy the ‘climate crisis,’ ranking it at the bottom or next to the bottom of their major issue concerns.
Part of us fears that any predictions of the death of the religious climate crusade are greatly exaggerated. But we’re trusting Hayward on this. He’s not the type to deal in hyperbole.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Solar is cheaper than any other energy source, even with batteries. It is economical even in states like Tennessee where the TVA keeps prices for energy low .
Even the Solar Energy Industries Association says the price of solar is well above the TVA’s $ 2.91/kWh. With solar you pay for 25 years worth of electric bill up front. You are comparing prices in some mythical world were you can get a 25 year zero interest loan. I’ll take one if you are offering. If you have the cash, invest it. The interest will pay the electric bill and after 25 years instead paying to move toxic waste from your roof to a landfill – you will still have your money. Add in one hale or wind storm in 25 years and the numbers get much much worse.
Read up on solyndra. Good intentions maybe but the devil’s in the details. Also, solar energy is inconstant. Hit a science course for edification purposes. The grid is neverending power demand.
I believe one of the major reasons that Donald Trump won a majority of votes is because many of the voters are sick and tired of our institutional grifters: From the passed media titans (NY Times, Washington Post, CNN etc) to the so-called medical experts during COVID to these global warming/climate change charlatans.
We see what the institutional experts (and particularly the young see it- and see it clearly-since they are the ones that were most significantly affected, especially by treatments for COVID) have done. They’ve lied and-when caught-they censor all alternative opinions that disagree with them.
The lies during COVID; the censoring of alternative views on social media; the refusal of most media to cover alternative views on COVID (or on climate change or any of the things-like “Russian Collusion”- that Trump was accused of).
Everyone, including the young, saw an obviously age-riddled (both physically and mentally) Joe Biden. All also saw how the Democratic Party and most media and Hollywood legends (like George Clooney and the deranged Robert De Niro) protected Biden until all the juice had been squeezed out of him. The liars told them Biden was better than he ever was.
They saw Biden and concluded that those who told them Biden was still fresh were either liars or had bad judgement.
And still the grifters protected Biden, until the polls told them that he would lose against Trump. So undemocratically (no convention votes were cast for her) Kamala Harris was chosen to take his place.
Meanwhile, Trump was portrayed as the enemy of Democracy!
Many people finally woke up (the previously Woke finally awoke) and now they are itching for a reckoning.
Clay Travis on the radio today said that many of the young (in recent polls) are now MORE conservative than 75 year olds.
The chickens have come home to roost and-except for Democratic urban strongholds (whose many voters are paid to vote)-hopefully these chickens will roost for years and years and years to come.
As far as I’m concerned, finally the mote has been cast from the Woke’s eyes and now on this clear day they can clearly see what they hadn’t looked at before.
Read about Ira Einhorn. Earth Day. All that jazz. Its a cult. People got brainwashed. The cult spread throughout academia. Crapocrats are heavily nested in academia. Deprogramming will be hard.
Climate Change has always been a scam to facilitate money laundering by the Left. Stacy Abrams knows nothing about much of anything, and even less about climate science, but her brand new NGO that had $100 in its bank account was give 2 billion dollars by the Biden Administration. The level of fraud that’s been perpetrated on the American taxpayer is mind boggling. A lot of people should be in prison, but it will never happen. The American aristocracy never has to face the consequences like the peasants do.
There are still some Useful Idiots who beleive this Climate Change/Global Warming poppycock/Balderdash and think we a ll need to live a Primative life
There exists a great many people who, for whatever unhealthy psychological reason, feel that the sky is always falling, that we are doomed.
There’s always something that is going to spell the end. I’m 69 years old, and I’ve seen the following:
-1960s: overpopulation was going the result in mass starvation
-1970s: global cooling; the wheat fields of the Midwest were going to freeze, resulting in….mass starvation
-1980s: acid rain was going to burn and destroy the world’s jungles (oh, I mean “rain forests”)
– 1990s: ozone layer depletion; we were all going to be sunburned to death
– 2000s: global warming; cooling was out, a world ablaze was in
– 2010s: climate change; warming was out, the name changed because the warming theory wasn’t working
– 2020s: we’re back to global warming again.
It’s weird.
It is true that the climate disinformation machine funded by the fossil fuel industry has mislead many less knowledgeable people.
It is also true that the worst president in modern history has taken the wrong side of many issues, including climate science and many other sciences.
These facts do not change the scientific facts about humans having caused a 50% increase in atmospheric CO2, which HAS TO cause warming, unless something of equal or greater cooling effect counteracts it.
The Earth is clearly warming. Deniers claimed that the record-breaking year of 1998 was the end of the warming period. They were wrong. Every decade is higher than the previous, and higher than any other decade in human history.