Does it ever appear to you that most governments and especially the Federal government live in some sort of alternative universe? Recently a local government decided to shut down local oil rigs in the name of saving the planet. The problem was that those oil rigs contributed about eighty-three million dollars to the government in the form of taxes. As the day of the shut down approached, (the decision had been made two years ago), someone in government asked how were those funds going to be replaced? Perhaps a reduction in the number of city workers? No, not that. Eliminating non-essential government programs? No, not that. Then someone had a brilliant idea: increase the sales tax even though the current city sales tax is among the highest in the nation. Yes! Great idea!

On the national level, the lack of being in touch with reality is even greater. For example, the EPA last Good Friday decided to roll out it is Biden inspired electric truck mandate. From 2027-2032, heavy-duty trucks will be responsible for an ever-increasing percentage of trucks on the road. By 2032 the percentage is targeted to be 25%.

There are a number of questions and concerns that came to light immediately, but which somehow were not anticipated or answered by either the EPA of the White House, for example:

• The batteries of semis are larger and heavier than those in fossil fuel vehicles, so their pay loads will be smaller.
  • This means that there will be more semis on the road which will lead to more traffic congestion which will lead to:
    • More pollution as their tires creates more soot than conventional tires.
    • Higher delivery costs
    • Greater damage to the highways as these semis are heavier which may be beyond the original engineering specifications.
• The cost.
  • While there will be more semis on the road, where will the capital come from in order to pay for the new semis:
    • Electric semis cost on average, about twice as much as traditional semis.
      • This will lead to higher costs of transportation which will lead to higher costs for the consumer and greater inflation.
      • At the current time, there are no U.S. electric semis in production so will the new semis be manufactured by our national competitors such as China?
        • Is this mandate in reality a job core program for China?
      • What will be done with the hundreds of thousands of suddenly outlawed semis?
• Where will the energy come from?
  • By 2030, electric trucks are anticipated to use about 11% of California’s electricity. As the trucks have to run mostly during daylight hours in order to cover more ground, they will have to recharge at night when rates are higher, which will lead to greater shipping costs.
  • Between now and 2032, about 15,000 chargers will have to be built and installed each and every month. The government has installed less than a dozen chargers in the past two years.
  • Infrastructure will have to be upgraded, including transformers, wiring, etc. The estimated cost is $370 billion with another $620 billion being spent by the truckers themselves at their facilities. Another increase in pricing.

The list could easily go on and on and I sincerely doubt that anyone at the EPA, the White House or Congress is looking at how to solve those issues above in a time of major economic and international pressures. Perhaps the powers that have a few ounces of magic dust they intend to use to help implement their silly, unrealistic, childish mandate. And this is just one of many brilliant ideas we will continue to see coming out of D.C. in the future, no matter which party is in power. After all, the government must appear to be doing something or else we would just end up asking why we need so many bureaucrats in our lives.

Bjorn Lomborg does not have to take a back seat to any environmentalist. He has a long and reputable CV of environmental achievements and believes that for a much smaller price tag, we could do more to enhance the lives of millions of people around the world, instead of going after grandiose projects that somehow never seem to quite work out.

In his article, he points out some of the great fallacies which the left environmentalist movement has used to pry money from those who produce and give to those who claim to be following “science.”  Fallacies? Such as?

• Remember the great disappearing polar bear hoax? Somehow despite the wailing from the left, the polar bear has not disappeared, but rather the population has doubled.
• How about the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef? Oops, in 2024, the reef is setting yet another record for growth.
• The sinking islands: This was a special joy for the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who in 2019 went in his business suit to stand thigh deep in the Pacific behind a headline “Our Sinking Planet”. The only problem is that “Almost all the atoll islands are stable or increasing in size.”

If you read the entire article, you will wonder if the environmentalists are ever correct. “Well, anyone can make a mistake and what is the real harm?”  The harm is that each of these claims and others cost all of us trillions of dollars which could be better spent addressing problems that confront all of us, such as diseases, hunger, etc. Here are two examples of how your money is being wasted in the pursuit of ill-designed and often useless projects:

1. Electric School Buses: Three years ago, Vice President Harris was so happy to be able to announce a $5 Billion electric school bus program. How successful has it been? To date a total of sixty buses have been built. But they have created sixty new “green jobs.”  How? The same bus drivers who drove the old fossil fuel buses are now driving the green buses. Same drivers, new buses, counted as new green jobs. (www.climatedepot.com/20224/07/30 and Freebeacon.com)
2. EV Charging Stations: Three years ago, the Biden administration signed a bill authorizing $7.5 Billion for the installation of 500,000 EV charging stations. What has been accomplished? A total of seven charging stations have been installed. (NYPost.com, 2024/06/05)
3. You may ask, “Where has the money gone?” Straight into the pockets of bureaucrats (we always need more of them to “manage” new programs, consultants, community organizers, etc.

Someone, somewhere, should be brave enough to ask simple, logical questions and is willing to follow up on the promises made with your money. Or is that as silly as the claims of the environmental industry?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/polar-bears-dead-coral-and-other-climate-fictions-528b18ea?mod=opinion_feat2_commentary_pos2

It never ceases to amaze me how individuals and governments can pursue and believe in policies that have 1) failed throughout history, such as Marxism, socialism, etc. and 2) continue to follow a policy in the “name of science” when the totality of “science” is directly opposed to the promises of that policy. There are “believers” both in government and out who stumble along through life, claiming that “this time it will be different” or clearly choose to deny inconvenient facts.

The German policies regarding the “greening” of that economy has met with failure after failure yet the government seems more committed than ever to additional failures. From the huge investment in solar and wind power which has led to higher CO2 emissions, skyrocketing energy costs which has led to the fleeing of industries and increased unemployment, masses of Germans continue to believe that somehow physics and nature can be ignored and altered to fit into their naïve mind set.

The attached link points out the German commitment to failure and the price which will be paid by Germans and most of Europe. This at a time when a very real and immediate threat from Putin’s Russia is starting all of Europe in the face. The “green” policies of the Germans threaten the needed rearmament of the German military and thus pose another dagger aimed at the heart of Europe.

Germany’s Murder of Europe :: Gatestone Institute

Billions of dollars have been spent in the past few years by governments at every level as well as industries and special interests’ groups in the quest for going “green”.  Despite the auto manufacturers losing huge amounts of money, there are those who profit from the largess of governments and who manage to rake in huge subsidies in a futile effort to stay afloat.  Examples can be found across the United States where wind farms are suddenly not welcomed and those who plan such projects scramble to gain new subsidies and tax breaks as they realize their business model is not sustainable.

There are, however, deeper problems in the rush to “green”, and one major problem is the rather dull but necessar area of infrastructure.  It is estimated that 49.7 million miles of transmission lines will need to be built or replaced to achieve the 2040 deadline of net-zero emissions.  The winners in that silliness will be the Chinese who will have to build more coal plants to produce the transmission lines. 

The link below will take you to an article which raises serious questions regarding the world’s ability to reach the 2040 goal.  Indeed, the question is not how much of the 2040 goal is attainable, but rather is the goal necessary or positive for humanity. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-green-power-grid-isnt-coming/ar-AA1ix3ej

As I have written several times, governments have a habit of creating a new program funded by your tax dollars, then when the programs do not work out, decide that taxpayers need to pour more subsidies into the bad program to “rescue” their failure.  Wouldn’t it be wiser to re-examine the failing program, figure out why it is failing and then insist that those who manage the disaster fix the problems which are creating failure?  Sorry, I said a word that is verboten in government speak; wise.

For years the government has been taking your taxes to subsidize an idea whose time (and technology) has not really come, but they continue to create government made millionaires who receive subsidies for a concept that is not especially popular with consumers.  They also have decided that in the name of “green” energy, they have all but taken over another one-seventh of the U.S. economy, the auto industry (thanks to Obamacare they took over that one-seventh of the economy and it is working so well).  Watch on the horizon for more government bailouts funding by borrowing which you, the taxpayer will have to fund. 

Read the linked article below and count the days.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/brace-for-the-wind-and-electric-vehicle-bailouts-506383a8?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

When is science not science?  Apparently when you read about science in a “scientific” journal. It is one thing when demigods proclaim that science and math is racist, it is another thing when professional journals whose articles can impact people’s care and life decide to slant or exclude information which the editors dislike or dispute.  It seems unfortunately, that there are, indeed, individuals who willingly distort scientific papers that do not conform to their individual prejudices and/or political beliefs.

There is a great deal of pressure to publish in the academic and scientific community, and it appears that certain “professionals” have diluted or even changed the results of their studies to conform to these pressures.  That is bad enough, but what is even more ugly is when previously trusted professional journals set out informal or even formal guidelines for approved narratives. And, with the demand for more spectacular findings, a perfect storm is created between the pressure to publish and the demand for adhering to the “correct” narrative.

The attached link will take you to a sad tale that simply fuels the increasing mistrust of our governmental and social institutions.  Printing the truth of findings is not enough; findings must be exciting and adhere to the ideology of the editors.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-preapproved-narratives-corrupt-science-false-studies-covid-climate-change-5bee0844?page=1

I post this as I have some real-world experience with this type of conversion.  Quebec Canada mandated that all oil furnaces be replaced by heat pumps, and this impacted my retired in-laws.  As they could not find any source for heating oil, they reluctantly had the old furnace removed and had a new heat pump installed. 

During their first winter, they found that the warmest room in the house was in the basement due to the equipment for the heat pump.  They found that the second-floor bedrooms were not receiving enough heat and took to using more blankets and even wearing a knit cap during the coldest weather. To help remedy the problem, they looked at adding additional insulation and installing siding over the second story brick outside walls.

In the end, it cost them tens of thousands of dollars, all of it from their retirement funds. 

While subsidies may be available with the California plan, where does the money come from?  The government?  No, the government does not produce anything of value in the open market.  It comes from TAXES. So, the old law of government is proven:

The government creates a problem, then to solve the problem they create a bureaucracy which needs to be paid for by raising taxes.  In some places, this is called (excuse the French) a circle jerk.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/californias-heat-pump-fantasy

Confused about climate change/warming/etc.?  You should be. Especially when the average weatherman, if he was a ballplayer, would not be in the big leagues (oh, I forgot, the “experts” can tell us what is going to happen in fifty-years, but not next week).  OK, maybe a cheap shot, but still, we hear that we only have twelve years until the end of the world while others tell us we have twenty-five years.  What is the real answer?  In reality, no one knows and anytime we are shown computer models, how many of us remember the first rule of using computers: garbage in, garbage out.

The link below will take you to a video which explains some of the problems involved with computer modeling, especially modeling based on a worldwide events over which we have no means of control.  Even assuming the most objective of modeling, the slightest difference of input can make major differences in outcomes.

Watch the video and you will be better able to judge the various projections and put them in a better context.

https://www.policyed.org/policy-stories/challenges-and-realities-climate-modeling/video?_hsmi=271572052&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_wpSAspWFv9mxFHYDWE_PhRoY2xr4q6t11I6NIKT32UDyuXYoyXCP851r3nzV8MPUck0Cc0NsakeNKmsprX8N6NKHhcA

As I write this, much of the United States is suffering under a heat wave and accordingly, the usual suspects are on television reminding us that if we do not follow their wonderful directions and stop flying to our vacation destination the temperature will continue to rise until we are all reduced to cinders.  After their forecast of doom, they nobly get on their private jet and hurry off to a luxury location where they are joined by fellow travelers who then congratulate themselves on their noble and brave appearances on television.

Certainly, if you were a member of the baby boom generation, you might take the news that we are all doomed unless we begin to cook using electric stoves with just a bit of skepticism.  Why?  Because we have heard it all before; in fact, we have heard the tales of doom multiple times.  Remember the fact that we were headed to a new ice age?  Or, that billions of people were going to starve due to a shortage of food?  How could we forget that the world would run out of oil sometime in the 1990’s, or that all the polar bears were going to die due to the disappearance of the ice caps?  Strange isn’t it that all of those and other forecasts were wrong and yet we are expected to blindly believe and follow the new messiahs as they want us to march bravely backward into the fourteenth century.

Yet, there may be some degree of truth in their dire forecasts, and if there is, individuals such as Bjorn Lomborg will help us all to put them into the proper perspective.  In the article linked below, Lomborg points out that people are not stupid, and that the history of mankind has been a lesson on how humanity lives with and adapts to the natural world. For example, the number of deaths from climate in the last century is down by over 95%.  How is that possible if the earth is going through a major climate change?  Perhaps it is because we have adapted to the world around us and by taking steps to shape our environment. Or, what about those “super storms” who are bearing down on us?  Actually, the number of hurricanes that have made landfall since 1900 is down slightly.

The article helps to put climate change in perspective, in terms of costs, impact, and realistic options.  It is a bit of fresh air that can help you judge better those talking heads and messiahs who somehow fail to lead by example; they continue to purchase huge houses by the shore, travel in private jets and leave behind the largest of carbon footprints. 

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Imprimis_Apr_8pg_5-23WEB.pdf

Originally published 06.01/2023 on Fox News.com by Alex Epstein

The “green energy” movement claims that it wants cost-effective energy—affordable, reliable, plentiful—just without fossil fuels’ pollution or GHG emissions. But this is contradicted by its hostility toward clean, non-carbon nuclear and hydro—the most proven alternatives to fossil fuels.

You might expect the “green-energy” movement to be the Number 1 supporter of clean, non-carbon nuclear and hydroelectric energy, but instead, it is the Number 1 opponent. “Green” groups have opposed nuclear for decades (leading to crippling costs) and worked to shut down hydroelectric dams. 

Why does the “Green” movement oppose nuclear and hydro?

It is because “green” solar and wind are just so cost-effective and so “green”?

No. Solar and wind have not proven to be cost-effective at all, and in many ways, they are the least “green” form of energy.

“Green energy” isn’t really energy

Calling solar and wind “green energy” makes them seem like other forms of energy, just “green.” But they’re not. All other forms of energy provide reliable energy—real energy—whereas solar and wind are unreliable parasites of reliable energy.

Despite claims that solar and wind are rapidly replacing fossil fuels, they provide less than 5% of world energy—only electricity, one-fifth of energy—and, crucially, even that small percentage depends on huge subsidies and reliable (mostly fossil-fueled) power plants. 

Calling solar and wind “green energy” makes them seem like other forms of energy, just “green.” But they’re not. All other forms of energy provide reliable energy—real energy—whereas solar and wind are unreliable parasites of reliable energy.

Solar and wind’s basic problem is unreliability, to the point they can go near zero at any time. Thus, they don’t replace reliable power, they parasitize it. This is why they need huge subsidies and why no grid is near 50% solar and wind without huge parasitism on reliable neighbors.  

The popular idea that we can use mostly or only solar and wind with sufficient battery backup is not being tried anywhere because it’s economically absurd. Batteries are so expensive that just 3 days of global backup using Elon Musk’s Megapacks would cost $600 trillion, about six times global GDP!  

“Green” solar and wind may someday become a part of real energy solutions—if generators using solar and wind are willing to guarantee reliability, instead of generating unreliable power and forcing everyone else to clean up their mess. But today’s “green energy” is not real energy. If solar and wind ever become truly cost-effective, you can be certain of one thing: the “green energy” movement will oppose them as insufficiently “green” given their huge “environmental impacts.” 

“Green energy” isn’t really green

If solar and wind became cost-effective and deployed on a large scale, they would have a level of “environmental impact” from mining and land use that would make the “green movement” oppose them. In fact, this is already happening. “Green” means minimal or nonexistent “environmental impact.”

Because sunlight and wind are dilute sources of energy—they take up more space and use more of many materials than fossil fuels or nuclear. This massive “environmental impact” is not at all “green.”  

Consider the land use requirements of solar. The world uses over 165,000 TWh of energy per year, which requires ~19 billion kW of power on average. An optimistic, real-world power density for solar projects is 10 Watts per square meter. To power the world, you’d need ~1.8 million square kilometers of solar PV projects.  

If 1.8 million square kilometers of solar panels doesn’t seem like much, note that it is more than all cities, towns, villages, and human infrastructure combined (~1.5 million square kilometers).  

And this excludes the huge footprints of solar and battery mining, manufacturing, and transmission. Consider the mining requirements of solar, wind, and batteries. An International Energy Agency projection for a “net zero” scenario shows an increase in mining and processing of minerals such as lithium, graphite, nickel, and rare earths by 4,200%, 2,500%, 1,900%, and 700% by 2040. 

Because “green energy” has so much enviromenatal impact even on today’s small scale it faces huge “green” opposition to its land use, mining, and transmission-line-building requirements. For example, the Biden administration recently shut down a prime “green energy” mining site in Minnesota.  

If “green” solar and wind aren’t really energy, and if they have so much environmental impact that the “green” movement opposes them in practice, then why does the green movement so enthusiastically support them rhetorically? To hide its real goal: radically reducing energy use.

“Green”—”minimal human impact”—is a fundamentally anti-energy idea. Energy is “the capacity to do work,” which means transforming—impacting—our environment. The more energy we use, the more we transform Earth, the more impact we have. If you don’t want us to impact Earth you ultimately must oppose every form of energy.

The fundamental hostility of the “green” movement to energy explains why throughout its history it has never supported current, cost-effective sources of energyand only “supported” imaginary sources of energy that might exist in the future.

“Green” leaders supported nuclear—until it became cost-effective, at which point they demonized and criminalized it. “Green” leaders supported natural gas—until it became cost-effective on a global scale thanks to shale energy tech, at which point they demonized it as “fracking.”

Because the “green” movement is anti-energy any enthusiasm its leaders express for fusion is phony; while they may claim to want clean, cheap, abundant energy before it exists, they will not like the impact it has once it exists. And in the past, green leaders admitted this.  

Amory Lovins, the leader of the modern “green energy” movement, said in the 1970s: “If you ask me, it’d be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we would do with it.”  

The world needs to reject the “green” movement and instead embrace a “human flourishing” movement that embraces intelligent human impact on Earth as a good thing. It’s one that both embraces today’s most cost-effective energy sources—including fossil fuels—and is eager to improve on them.

Alex Epstein is the author of “Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal and Natural Gas,” and the creator of Energy Talking Points on Substack a source of powerful, concise, well-referenced talking points on energy, environmental, and climate issues.