Reblog of James Simpson’s August 7, 2023 post, “The Art of the Steal: Net Zero Is Unattainable, The Greatest Heist in World History” link below.
One of the Biden administration’s stated goals is to “deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030 and achieve a net-zero carbon economy by 2050.” As already pointed out, this will only increase offshore wind’s contribution to 4.5 percent, and then only with massive government spending, loan guarantees, and mandates because green energy, especially offshore wind, is not profitable.
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has turbocharged the agenda, already well under way. But that is a drop in the bucket compared to a full implementation of the Green New Deal, estimated to cost between $51 and $93 trillion.
But could “net zero” be achieved, even with the spending envisioned by the Green New Deal? Non-carbon energy comes from four main sources: solar, wind, nuclear and hydroelectric. (There is also a modest amount of geothermal and hydrogen.) Existing hydroelectric dams in the U.S. are already being dismantled at an unprecedented rate, so constructing new ones will be unlikely. We are left with solar, wind and nuclear.
Ignoring the fact that the Left will almost certainly oppose new nuclear plants, it is literally not possible to construct enough “clean” energy plants, including nuclear, to achieve net zero by 2050 or even much further out.
Patrick Frank is a physical methods experimental chemist. BS, MS, San Francisco State University; PhD, Stanford University; Bergmann Postdoctoral Fellow, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. Now Emeritus scientific staff of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Department of Chemistry, Stanford University.
Screen capture from video interview of Dr. Patrick Frank linked above.
Spoiler alert!
5.3. Final Conclusions
Direct evidence of a warming climate since the 19th century includes the lengthened growing season, the revegetation of the far North, and the poleward migration of the northern tree line [274,275,276,277,278,279,280,281,282,283]. However, at the 95% level of uncertainty, neither the rate nor the magnitude of 19th or 20th century warming can be known. A more detailed appraisal of errors may modify the uncertainty bounds, but an alternative conclusion is unlikely.
The 20th century surface air-temperature anomaly, 0.74 ± 1.94 °C (2σ), does not convey any knowledge of rate or magnitude of change in the thermal state of the troposphere. Climate alarm on that account is unjustifiable. The Joule-drift that certainly plagued all LiG thermometers manufactured prior to 1885 obviates the reliability of earlier air-temperature measurements. The global averaged surface air-temperature anomaly record cannot sustain any notion of unprecedented climate warming over the last 200 years, or over any other timespan.
LiG Metrology, Correlated Error, and the Integrity of the Global Surface Air-Temperature Record
The plan for C40 Cities is below for download as pdf
August 25, 2023 by Connor Walcott
Fourteen major American cities have signed onto a globalist climate agreement with a truly dystopian goal for the country’s immediate future that includes eliminating meat and dairy consumption, private vehicle ownership, air travel, and clothing purchases. According to a report by The Federalist, the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group plans to accomplish this vision by 2030—and Austin, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Seattle are all on board.
The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group was first created in 2005 by London Mayor Ken Livingston and representatives from 18 megacities around the world to reduce climate pollution. The organization, at that time called the C20, merged with the Clinton Climate Initiative the following year, bringing its membership up to 40. In the decades since then, the group has expanded to include 96 cities, representing one-twelfth of the global population and 25% of the global economy.
The C40 is now chaired by London Sadiq Khan, with Democrat billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg serving as its president and primary financial backer—and like all globalist climate initiatives, it threatens to be a disaster for modern society.
The C40’s climate goals are laid out plainly in a 2019 report entitled “The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C World,” which was reemphasized in 2023. The report detailed the organization’s “ambitious target” of cutting consumption-based carbon emissions by “at least 50% by 2030.” In order to accomplish this, the C40 identified six sectors where “rapid action” is recommended: food, construction, clothing, vehicles, aviation, and electronics.
The ultimate goal, according to the report, is “0 kg of meat consumption,” “0 kg of dairy consumption,” “3 new clothing items per year,” “0 private vehicles,” and “1 short-haul return flight (less than 1,500 km) every three years” per person.
Despite so-called fact-checks from mainstream media claiming that these “targets” do not constitute real policy recommendations, C40 cities across the United States have followed in lockstep with the agenda. Earlier this year, New York City Mayor Eric Adams placed restrictions on the meat and dairy products served by public institutions. California, meanwhile, has been at the forefront of the push for electric vehicles. At the same time, in Europe, the UK banned the sale of new gas vehicles after 2030 and France banned short-haul air travel.
Equally concerning is the fact that the globalist World Economic Forum promotes the C40 agenda on its website, in keeping with its Great Reset agenda…
‘Only Those Who Disobeyed Survived’ Maui Wildfire Roadblocks
August 24, 2023 by Connor Walcott
Survivors of the wildfire that decimated the island of Maui have revealed that the only paved exit out of the town of Lahaina was barricaded by authorities as residents tried to escape. According to a shocking report from the Associated Press, work crews actively turned fleeing vehicles back towards the oncoming flames, leading to dozens of deaths—and only those who disobeyed survived.
The deadly blaze first broke out earlier this month when weather systems from a nearby hurricane combined with dry inland conditions to create the perfect circumstances for a brush fire. Preexisting issues with the power infrastructure on the island of Maui—which Hawaiian Electric knew about but failed to address for years—resulted in downed powerlines and showers of sparks, which grew into uncontrollable fires. With 115 confirmed deaths and an estimated 1,000 people still missing, this has become one of the deadliest wildfires in American history.
In the wake of the fire, the public has gradually begun to see the extent to which bureaucratic incompetence and system failure were involved in this tragedy. Beyond Hawaiian Electric’s failure to repair the known issues in favor of funding green energy projects, the finger of blame has also been pointed at Maui’s emergency manager. As Valuetainment previously reported, Emergency Management Agency Chief Herman Andaya resigned last week after failing to activate the outdoor warning sirens that might have alerted Lahaina residents to the fire. Andaya argued that the system, designed to warn of tsunamis, would not have helped in the case of a fire, but other county officials contradicted this assessment.
Additional blame has been attributed to the Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management. Prior to the disaster, the department was led by a “water equity advocate” who refused to authorize additional water to fight the fire based on the resource’s “revered” status in native Hawaiian tradition.
However, in perhaps the most shocking report to date, witnesses who survived the devastation in Lahaina say they were hindered from escaping when officials closed the Lahaina Bypass Road south of town, cutting off the only paved access to the Honoapiilani Highway. As the flames closed in on the town, the stream of fleeing cars was brought to a standstill by work crews repairing downed power poles along the road.
To escape the gridlock, some residents chose to disobey the road closure and drove around the cones and work vehicles—and that likely saved their lives.According to the Associated Press, “one family swerved around the barricade and was safe in a nearby town 48 minutes later, another drove their 4-wheel-drive car down a dirt road to escape. One man took a dirt road uphill, climbing above the fire and watching as Lahaina burned.”
But dozens of others who remained in their vehicles—or worse yet, were directed back towards the town by officials on the scene—soon found themselves completely trapped when the fire closed in from three sides. Many died right there in their cars, while others attempted to flee on foot, their abandoned cars making the traffic jam even worse.
“The gridlock would have left us there when the firestorm came,” said Kim Cuevas-Reyes, a mother of two who avoided the closure by driving down the wrong side of the road. “I would have had to tell my children to jump into the ocean as well and be boiled alive by the flames or we would have just died from smoke inhalation and roasted in the car.”
The road did not reopen until 5:20 pm, nearly two hours after residents first began fleeing. “It made no sense what they were doing,” Cole Millington, a resident, said, according to NBC News. “They could see the sky was black. They could see the city was on fire. They could see the wind was still whipping everything around. But they were already starting to plant new power poles.”
Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said that police did not prevent residents from fleeing, but witness reports conflict regarding officer involvement in the road closures.
In total, 2,170 acres of land, including most of Lahaina itself, were destroyed by the fire. Government inquiries have been launched into various parties involved in the management of the disaster in the following weeks.
Headline: “From 2020 to 2021, life expectancy continued to decline in the U.S. while rebounding in most comparable countries.” The source: Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker (links below.)
The graph below is stunning. Yes, there is a sharp decline said to be due to covid-19 (though they use dubious, biased CDC covid-19 data). But, more importantly, the comparison of the long term trends should set off all of your alarms.
Excerpt: “Life expectancy in the U.S. and peer countries generally increased from 1980-2019, but decreased in most countries in 2020 due to COVID-19. From 2020 to 2021, life expectancy at birth began to rebound in most comparable countries while it continued to decline in the U.S. The CDC estimates life expectancy at birth in the U.S. decreased to 76.1 years in 2021, down 2.7 years from 78.8 years in 2019 and down 0.9 years from 2020. The average life expectancy at birth among comparable countries was 82.4 years in 2021, down 0.2 years from 2019 and up 0.4 years from 2020. (Note: 2021 life expectancy estimates for Canada are not yet available and therefore excluded in the comparable country average for 2021.)
The life expectancy data presented here are period life expectancy estimates based on excess mortality observed in each year. Period life expectancy at birth represents the mortality experience of a hypothetical cohort if current conditions persisted into the future and not the mortality experience of a birth cohort.
In other words, one of many implications, our children and grandchildren will probably have shorter lifetimes than ourselves. Another, U.S. healthcare is one of the most expensive in the world, especially after Obamacare, the so-called “Affordable Health Care Act” (which almost 100% of Republicans voted against before they could read it), yet U.S. life expectancy is performing poorly compared to that of other developed countries.
Don’t you think that this would be news appearing in supposedly conservative news outlets? But, it is counter to the big government/WEF narrative.
Hat tip to Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai on the health system problem.
Read the full articles with more graphs and demographics at these links
FDA/USDA/CDC/NIH recommendations for diet and drugs are directly influenced and funded by big corporations like Pfizer, Monsanto, Procter & Gamble, General Foods, all the food makers, etc. They all have been pushing for my entire lifetime in thousands of subsidized medical studies and journal articles, education programs, mainstream media, advertising, health policies and guidelines, for example the food pyramid and 3 square meals a day, etc. promoting carbohydrate-based foods (e.g., whole grains, seed oil, fruit, veggies, low-fat this and that), and recommending low meat, low cholesterol, and low-fat diets.
The result of that diet is almost always progressively increasing insulin resistance, inflammation, obesity, diabetes, atherosclerosis, heart diseases, digestive problems like gluten intolerance and inflammatory bowel disease and leaky gut, metabolic disease, cancers, thyroid disease and all kinds of other health issues. Then these myriad diseases are treated (not cured) by medical prescriptions (from doctors who mostly were not trained in nutrition) of ever more expensive drugs, over the counter (i.e., off-patent drugs) and an unlimited and rapidly growing stream of health care supplements, vitamins, minerals, electrolyte drinks, etc.
A continuous diet of carbohydrates produces insulin resistance and inflammation which reduces innate immunity resulting in higher susceptibility to infectious diseases and a very big market for vaccines and other treatments for those diseases. Many of those vaccines and treatments (like mRNA “vaccines”) cause high incidence of problems like (e.g., heart and clotting problems) which then must be treated by yet more prescription drugs. It should not surprise that the mRNA gene therapy drugs (aka “covid vaccines”) were followed by introduction of new heart drugs and new drugs for female menstrual bleeding irregularities, etc.
And, by the way, one of the leading causes of death is drug-drug interactions since all of these drugs overload the ability of the liver to metabolize these synthetic toxins and the ability of the kidneys to remove the non-natural metabolites of the synthetic toxin drugs from the body. Then it’s dialysis machines, kidney and liver replacements, and eventually there will be artificial internal organs. It’s dollar signs all around.
WEF/UN/almost all governments and big ag corporations want us to stop eating meat and fish and instead eat their artificial food and buy their drugs to treat the diseases caused by that artificial diet. But don’t worry, you will own nothing and be happy.
Please contribute to Kathie Breault’s legal defense fund. GiveSendGo
In April, 2023, Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM) Kathie Breault was indicted in the Eastern States District Federal Court for “Conspiracy to Defraud the United States” for giving vaccination cards to people who did not receive Covid-19 vaccinations. Her defense is that the vaccinations were ineffective and harmful, and to administer them would violate the Hippocratic oath of health professionals (First do no harm). Her legal battle against a dishonest and vindictive federal government will require lawyer’s fees that exceed her ability to pay — a reminder that “the process is the punishment.”
Kathie has also been accused of “professional misconduct” by the New York State Licensing Board for prescribing Ivermectin via telehealth visits in July 2021. Many other medical practitioners across the United States have been similarly persecuted and some have lost their licenses to practice. Kathie has been under investigation by New York’s Office of Professional Discipline since March 2022. No decision has been reached as of May 2023.
Please contribute to Kathie Breault’s legal defense fund. GiveSendGo
In 1968, two Stanford professors, Paul and Anne Ehrlich, wrote a book at the suggestion of the executive director of the Sierra Club, a prominent environmentalist organization. Titled *The Population Bomb*, the book warned that increasing birth rates—helped by the abundance of energy—would become a species-level crisis. Too many people would mean too little food, water, and land. Chaos would erupt. Doom would follow.
All of this would happen in the coming decades. The book’s ideas were not new. They were a modern repackaging of the economics of Thomas Malthus, who warned that an increase in economic growth would inevitably lead to a higher population than natural resources could sustain.
What both Malthus and the Ehrlichs failed to foresee was the degree to which human ingenuity would lead to innovations that would meet growing human needs. The result is that even though the population is larger than ever, the world’s food production per capita has never been higher than in modern times.
But tragically, fallacious Malthusian ideas have had a real-life impact on government policy. For example, lingering concerns about the population bomb led to horrific population control programs in countries around the world. Most know about China’s one-child policy. Less known is that the Peruvian government used US foreign-aid money to sterilize indigenous women involuntarily. Other population control policies were implemented around the world
The failure of these predictions has not disgraced the Malthusian worldview, however. In fact, its advocates continue to be treated as respected leaders in their fields. In 2023, Paul Ehrlich appeared on 60 Minutes to offer new warnings of extinction, despite a fifty-plus-year track record of being wrong.
The unfortunate reality is that predictions of environmental doom are useful for those that desire power. The greater the threat, the more power is needed. As history has shown, the government grows in times of crisis and rarely ever shrinks once the emergency has passed.
Even as concerns about global cooling have transformed into worries about global warming, the underlying need for power remains: the government needs to regulate, tax, and enjoy generally greater control over the organization of society.
This does not mean, of course, that all warnings about pollution and other negative externalities are not justified. What it does mean is that politicizing science is extremely dangerous. Whether it’s climate change, foreign policy, or covid-19, the unfortunate reality is that those that argue for aggressive state intervention are often rewarded with increased government funding. We pay for it with taxes, higher prices, and a loss of liberty.
The incentives of institutional research matter. In today’s world, they are too often guided by politics, not science.
The most destructive natural disasters are never 100 percent natural. Human choices, land use, and government policies play a big role in how harmful hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, flash floods, and wildfires are to the affected communities.
And after catastrophes like the wildfire that destroyed much of the historic Hawaiian city of Lahaina last week, it’s worth taking stock of how much of the disaster was the result not of natural or accidental factors, but of policies and institutions that can be changed.
Though details are still emerging, it’s becoming clear that government failure did much to make this disaster worse—and possibly even started it. While the so-called experts are blaming climate change—and in the process demanding that government grab even more power and authority ostensibly to someday give us better weather—the destructiveness of this fire was the product of an all-powerful and all-incompetent régime.
The specific origins of the fire are still being investigated, but there is much we already know. The city of Lahaina sits on the west coast of Maui, Hawaii’s second-largest island. It is surrounded by grassland, much of which the state owns.
Nearly a decade ago the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, a research nonprofit, warned the Hawaiian government that the area around Lahaina was extremely fire-prone due to frequent downslope winds, steep terrain, and dry grass. Little was done to address these risks. A subsequent report in 2020 added that an invasive species of exceptionally flammable grass was prevalent in the surrounding fields and that passing hurricanes created strong winds known to fuel wildfires on the islands.
Early last week, Hurricane Dora crossed the ocean south of Hawaii. By early Tuesday morning, August 8, winds as fast as sixty miles per hour were blowing down the slopes of the West Maui Mountains into Lahaina. Around sunrise, a large fault was detected in the power grid, indicating a downed power line. Twenty minutes later, the first reports of fire came in from the area around Lahainaluna Road, uphill and upwind from the city.
The area where flames were first spotted is full of electrical infrastructure, mostly operated by Hawaiian Electric, the state’s monopoly electricity supplier. This included a substation and a multitude of power lines. Most of the land in the area is owned by the State of Hawaii except for a parcel belonging to the estate of one of Hawaii’s last princesses. This parcel housed a solar farm supplying electricity to the Hawaiian Electric substation. Early last year, NPR published a glowing article about the solar project, praising it the direct result of government regulation crafted to help transition Hawaii to 100 percent renewable power by 2045.
But on the morning of August 8, as winds hammered the old wooden utility poles, this highly electrified area in the dry grasses above Lahaina was quickly becoming dangerous. Yet no formal procedure was in place to shut off sections of the grid in the face of severe fire risks. As a result, twenty-nine fully energized poles fell across West Maui that day.
But even with downed poles in the way, the first firefighters on the scene met with some early success. Around 9 a.m., the county fire department declared the fire “100 percent contained.” But the message to residents included an ominous request. The county’s water pumps were powered by electricity, much of which was frantically being turned off to deactivate the downed lines. Officials asked the public to conserve water to preserve water pressure.
But by midafternoon, a flare-up brought the fire back to life on the Lahaina Bypass, a major road that heads straight into town. The flames moved swiftly into Lahaina at 4:46 p.m., one minute after the county government finally sent out an alert to warn the city’s population, largely without power, about the flare-up that had occurred over an hour before.
To make matters worse, county officials failed to activate emergency sirens, leaving residents unaware of the danger bearing down on them. And as firefighters heroically rushed toward the flames to try and save their community, they found that there was little to no water pressure in the fire hydrants, which quickly ran dry.
With a single backed-up highway leading out of the city, many residents of Lahaina had nowhere to go. Some scrambled into the ocean to escape the smoke and flames. But in the end, many couldn’t get out. At least ninety-nine people have been confirmed dead at this writing, making this the deadliest American wildfire in over a century. In addition, 2,207 buildings were destroyed, with property damages expected to reach $5.5 billion.
To review, a power company shielded from competition by the state placed electrical infrastructure among highly flammable state-owned grass fields above the historic city of Lahaina, which the government was twice warned were highly susceptible to fire. And once a fire broke out, a combination of defective water infrastructure, terrible communication by government officials, and only one escape route doomed the people of Lahaina to the worst wildfire experienced in this country in over a hundred years.
This was government failure through and through. In Human Action, Ludwig von Mises explains that on the market, the ultimate source of profits is foresight—the ability to anticipate future conditions. And economic loss occurs when market actors fail to anticipate the future. This possibility of riches if one succeeds, and the guarantee of painful failures if one doesn’t, forces producers and service providers on the market to constantly weigh risks and opportunities.
Government immunizes itself from the profit and loss system, and therefore from much of the need to weigh risk. Sure, some county officials may resign because of this. And the share price of Hawaiian Electric may dip. But the people of Maui will be forced to keep compensating the very organizations that have failed them. And there’s nothing natural about that disaster.
budbromley 
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