Meat and Plant-based Foods to Combat Climate Change

 W.H.O. Declares War on Farming

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A new declaration from the World Health Organization has revealed that it wants the masses to eat less meat and more plant-based foods in order to supposedly combat "climate change." 

NYT Declares War on US Poulrty and farmers

Global Goals - Bjorn Lomborg

 Global Goals - Bjorn Lomborg (and Bill Gates)

Bjorn Lomborg is an economist whose work I've been following for many years. Lately we've had some fascinating conversations about global health and development, which led us to write this post together.

The Global Goals are a phenomenal idea. They’re what happened when the U.N. came together and said: “Here are the world’s biggest problems, and here is how we’re going to measure progress on them.” The 17 goals include promises to end extreme poverty and hunger, fix climate change and education, and reduce inequality and corruption.

Scientists Have Achieved Fusion Ignition.

 POWER, UNLIMITED POWER

: For the Second Time, U.S. Scientists Have Achieved Fusion Ignition.

On December 5, 2022, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) achieved something truly remarkable. After firing 192 lasers at a small pellet filled with deuterium-tritium fuel, the resulting reaction essentially created a tiny star for a few nanoseconds. Crucially, the energy created by this reaction was more than the energy put into the reaction. In other words, science had finally achieved nuclear fusion ignition.

Until that point, humans had never been able to recreate the life-giving power generated in the center of our Sun on Earth. But for the first time, the clean energy promise of nuclear fusion—arguably the greatest energy source imaginable—suddenly seemed possible. Now, fast forward only eight months, and LLNL has achieved ignition again. But this time, they had even greater results.

LLNL spokesperson Paul Rhien spoke with The Financial Times on Sunday, and said that “in an experiment conducted on July 30, we repeated ignition at NIF. Analysis of those results is underway, but we can confirm the experiment produced a higher yield than the December test.”

Maybe the question now isn’t whether we’ll ever achieve usable fusion power but whether the powers that be would allow affordable, unlimited energy. That certainly hasn’t been the case with nuclear fission in recent decades.

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 Carbon-Neutral Goal (ANightmare)

IEA’s Net Zero Dream Was Just Debunked as a Nightmare

By Daniel Turner
June 29, 2023

First they came for the cars. Then the gas stoves. Next was meat and dairy products. The latest on the chopping block? Wood-fired pizza. These types of tactics grab the headlines, but make no mistake: climate alarmism courses through the veins of the highest levels of government leaders and regulators. 

As President Joe Biden would say, “I’m not joking, folks.” 

Climate Strategy Plan - COVid Lockdown II

 BIDEN’S NEW CLIMATE STRATEGY: STAY HOME.

The COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t all bad, a new Biden administration plan to fight climate change argues: It at least “highlighted major opportunities” to reduce travel demand and lower carbon emissions through “remote work and virtual interactions.”

The plan—which President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency and Energy, Transportation, and Housing departments released in January—aims to “eliminate nearly all greenhouse gas emissions” from the transportation sector by 2050, mostly through a transition to electric vehicles. Also included in the plan, however, is a controversial call to reduce “commuting miles” through “an increase in remote work and virtual engagements,” including in education.

Make sure you read the last part of the final sentence of that excerpt carefully. Yes, they’re talking about working remotely and using Zoom calls or similar technology to hold meetings. But they added the phrase “including in education.”

Has anyone on Joe Biden’s team been paying any attention to the news for the past year? The school closures during the lockdown were disastrous for students. (And they were pretty hard on many parents as well, of course.) Students’ educational achievements cratered. Their emotional development was stunted. High school grades and graduation rates dropped, along with college admissions.

And now Joe Biden is pushing to have more of that “remote learning” make a comeback in the name of climate change? Have we learned nothing from the past three years? One thing we definitely learned was that children were at the lowest risk of bad outcomes from COVID, so the schools were probably the last places we should have shut down.

I can’t shake the feeling that this brings us one step closer to a declared “climate emergency.” You people can all stay locked down in your homes voluntarily to save the polar bears or we can declare an emergency and lock you down like we did during COVID.

As Stephen Miller asked in February of 2021:  Are you ready for the climate lockdowns? It’s only a matter of time.

111Posted at 5:41 pm by Ed Driscoll   

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A Theology (Not Ideology) of Creation Care

 

Vol. 18, No. 90 A Theology (Not Ideology) of Creation Care Photo by Akil Mazumder (Pexels) We have been charged to care for God’s creation. To be stewards of all that God has made and entrusted to us. Since the Industrial Revolution, we have been able to do more care for creation than ever before, as well as more harm.   That harm has ramifications that border on the nightmarish, and no one is more affected than the poorest of the poor. No matter what you may think is behind it all – natural causes, human causes, or both – that creation is suffering in unprecedented ways is without dispute.   Extreme heat. Drought. Mudslides. The rise of intense storms and hurricanes. Melting of glaciers. Rising animal extinctions. Rising plant extinctions. The freakish amount and scope of wildfires.   This should matter to any follower of Christ.   UNICEF just released a report that by 2050, virtually every child on the planet – more than 2 billion children – will experience frequent heat waves as part of their life. Pediatricians say that young children and infants are more susceptible to heat-related illnesses, in part because their bodies cannot regulate temperature as effectively as adults. Children also lose fluid more quickly and are at a greater risk of heat stroke because they lack the judgment and maturity needed to taper their physical exertion or know to rehydrate. Extreme heat is also known to trigger symptoms in people with asthma, which affects about 6 million children in the U.S. alone.   So why aren’t more Christians engaged?   It’s because we have approached creation care ideologically instead of theologically.   Politicization has invaded our thinking to such a degree that when it comes to environmental concerns and challenges, responsibilities and commitments, we think about our political moorings before we look to what the Bible actually says. Or more to the point, instead of what the Bible actually says. We carry our political views like they are religious views, and we often make those political views our true religion.   As Sandra Richter observes in her book Stewards of Eden, “... in the United States, if you are an environmentalist, it is assumed that you are a Democrat.... If you are a Republican, it is assumed that you cannot also be pro-environment. In other words, somehow environmental advocacy has been pigeonholed into a particular political profile and has become guilty by association.”  She then adds these words: “But of course, Christians are first the citizens of heaven, and therefore our alliances and our value systems are not defined by American politics.”   So how do we think Christianly about creation care? What would a beginning theology entail?   The first and most foundational thing to understand about creation is that it doesn’t belong to us. It isn’t ours to simply do with as we please. It belongs to God. As we read in the 24th psalm, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him” (Psalm 24:1, NLT). You find that very same declaration made throughout Scripture (e.g., Psalm 50:10-11, Colossians 1:15-16).   Second, we have been charged to care for creation. The nature of that stewardship, as outlined in Genesis 1 and 2, is very clear: we are to reflect the image of God toward creation through governing and reigning, tending and watching over. This is dominion, not domination. The directive was truly creation care. As Dorothy Boorse writes in Loving the Least of These: Addressing a Changing Environment: “We don’t worship creation. We worship God by caring for creation.”   Third, this charge didn’t end with the Garden of Eden and the fall of humanity into sin and the world into brokenness. Just as God seeks to redeem us from our sin, and those of us who have been redeemed seek to share that redemptive work with others, God intends to redeem all of creation, and thus we are to continue to take our care of creation seriously. As Paul wrote, “Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” (Romans 8:20-22, NLT) Finally, a theology of creation care extends that care in a holistic manner to the land and plants (Ex. 23:10-11; Lev. 25:4-5), both domestic and wild animals (Gen. 9:8-11, Ex. 23:12, Deut. 5:14-15, 22:6-7, 25:4), eco-systems (Job 39:5-8, Ps. 104:10-12, 16-18) and environment (Deut. 20:19-20). Many of the laws given to the people of Israel were fulfilled in Christ and not meant to be specifically applied today (e.g., dietary laws). But what is present in each and every one of the environmental directives is the heart of God in the matter. It was uniformly related to the care and ongoing sustainability of creation.   So here is the foundational theology behind creation care: Creation belongs to God. We have been charged, as Image bearers, to care for creation. Creation is included in God’s redemptive plan. That care involves responsible stewardship. But theology is meant to be applied. Here’s how Wendell Berry, in his book What Are People For, made the application: “The ecological teaching of the Bible is simply inescapable: God made the world because He wanted it made. He thinks the world is good, and He loves it. It is His world; He has never relinquished title to it. And He has never revoked the conditions, bearing on His gift to us of the use of it, that oblige us to take excellent care of it. If God loves the world, then how might any person of faith be excused for not loving it or justified in destroying it.” Yes.    And I pray to God that the people of God would begin applying it before it is too late.          James Emery White     Sources   Kelly Kasulis Cho, “‘Virtually Every Child’ to Face Frequent Heat Waves By 2050, UNICEF Says,” The Washington Post, October 26, 2022, read online.   Sandra L. Richter, Stewards of Eden: What Scripture Says About the Environment and Why It Matters (InterVarsity Press, 2020), p. 2.   “Loving the Least of These: Addressing a Changing Environment,” published by the National Association of Evangelicals, Revised Edition (2022), p. 16.   Wendell Berry, What Are People For? (New York: North Point, 1990), p. 98.

Biden Continues to Blunder:

 NEVER UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO F*CK THINGS UP: 

Biden’s Day One Actions Haunt Him Still: The president blunders from one self-inflicted crisis to the next.

President Joe Biden was outraged on October 5 when the oil-and-gas cartel OPEC+ announced that it would cut production by two million barrels of oil per day. He had reason to be angry. The dis was personal. And the move has global implications. OPEC+ includes Russia, and rising oil prices will help Vladimir Putin, undermine Europe’s ability to keep the lights on, and reduce food supply in the Global South. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and National Economic Council director Brian Deese released a joint statement slamming the decision as “shortsighted” and harmful for “lower- and middle-income countries that are already reeling from elevated energy prices.”

Yet the White House’s true worry is domestic. Here is how you can tell: Sullivan and Deese mentioned Ukraine only once in their 311-word missive. But they brought up the proverbial gas “pump” twice and U.S. “gas prices” three times. President Biden has been around long enough to understand the special relationship between fuel prices and presidential job approval. He’s incensed that OPEC+ may have helped the Republican opposition weeks before the midterm election.

Biden really ought to look in the mirror. The OPEC+ embarrassment was the latest reminder that he, not Putin nor Saudi Arabia, is the chief author of the Democratic Party’s current woes. On issue after issue, the instructions that Biden gave at the outset of his presidency have made America less prosperous, less independent, and less secure.

Energy and immigration tell the tale. Biden signed 17 executive orders on his first day in office, and two of them dealt with U.S. oil and gas production. One order pledged that America would rejoin the Paris climate accords and commit to the deal’s targeted reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. The other order blocked oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, forbade drilling in large parts of Utah, and canceled the Keystone XL pipeline between the United States and Canada. One week later, Biden stopped issuing new oil and gas leases on public lands.

Biden knew what he was doing. The “clean energy transition,” as Sullivan and Deese put it, is among the top priorities of the Democratic Party. The transition involves hiking the cost of carbon-based energy to the point where renewable alternatives become affordable by comparison. You decrease supply of oil and gas until prices rise enough for the average consumer to search online for a Tesla.

Retail gas prices rose steadily between Election Day 2020 and June 2022. Midway through his first year in office, Biden’s energy-dampening regulations contributed to and interacted with the general price inflation he mistakenly assumed to be “temporary.” The president panicked. Rather than confront the green crusaders who fund his party, he opened the spigots of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) and pleaded with OPEC+, especially with America’s Persian Gulf allies, to increase production. Gas prices fell between June and September. They settled where they were earlier this year and have ticked upward since.

Biden’s strategy of dependence has run aground. The SPR has been drained to its lowest level since 1984. OPEC+ has told Biden no. The nuclear deal with Iran is in limbo as the mullahs fend off the most significant challenge to their rule in years. And a Wall Street Journal report that the administration was looking into easing sanctions on Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela so that Chevron could increase output brought jeers from Republicans and a hurried denial from the White House.

Biden’s regulations and restrictions accomplished what he wanted: more expensive oil and gas. His problem is that voters do not want the future the climate Cassandras have in store for them.

The thing is, Greens want to make your life worse. The policies for doing so may vary, the the impact is always the same. That’s because making your life worse is the goal; the policy arguments are just the current excuse.

1Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds   

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Lake Mead and the Colorado River: Water Usage Cuts Coming

 

Takeaways from today's report on Lake Mead and the Colorado River

From CNN's Angela Fritz

  

The federal government announced that the Colorado River will operate in a Tier 2 shortage condition for the first time starting in January as the West’s historic drought has taken a severe toll on Lake Mead.

What this means:

• Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will have to further reduce their Colorado River use beginning in January. California will not yet have cuts made to the water it receives from the Colorado River.
• Of the impacted states, Arizona will face the largest cuts — 592,000 acre-feet — or about 21% of the state’s yearly allotment of river water.

Those cuts are part of a system that Colorado River states have already agreed to in the case of an unprecedented water shortage.

But experts say those mandatory cuts are not enough to save the river.

In June, Bureau of Reclamation chief Camille Touton told the river’s stakeholders to come up with a plan to reduce up to 25% of their water usage. 

She gave them an August 15 deadline, but negotiations have been difficult and are not finished. Touton did not specify on Tuesday any new deadlines that might be set for states to come up with a plan for the drastic cuts.

"Today we're starting the process and more information will follow as far as the actions we'll take in that process," Touton said on Tuesday. "I want to continue to push on the need for partnership in this space and the need for collaboration and finding a consensus solution. Not just for next year but for the future."

Some of the river’s stakeholders are eager for the federal government to step in with a plan. John Entsminger, the general manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, told CNN that so far not enough of the stakeholders have put forth proposals that would get the basin to Touton's target.

“There's only so much water, and mother nature will figure this out at some point," Entsminger said. "At some point, there's just not water in the river channel."

Climate Change Disaster Preditions Nev er Change

 SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST:

● Shot:

BERLIN (AP) — Temperatures on Earth will shoot past a key danger point unless greenhouse gas emissions fall faster than countries have committed, the world’s top body of climate scientists said Monday, warning of the consequences of inaction but also noting hopeful signs of progress.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change revealed “a litany of broken climate promises” by governments and corporations, accusing them of stoking global warming by clinging to harmful fossil fuels.

“It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track toward an unlivable world,” he said.

—

“UN warns Earth ‘firmly on track toward an unlivable world,’” 

AP, last Monday.

● Chaser:

A leaked draft report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change paints the starkest picture yet of the accelerating danger caused by human use of coal, oil, and gas. It warns of coming unlivable heat waves, widespread hunger and drought, rising sea levels and extinction. To understand the report’s warnings, William Brangham turns to atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayoe.

Judy Woodruff: A leaked draft report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change paints the starkest picture yet of the real and accelerating danger caused by humans’ use of coal, oil, and gas.

William Brangham has the latest.

William Brangham: That’s right, Judy.

This is a draft report, so it may still change. And it was obtained by the AFP, the Agence France-Presse., even so, the report says the threat from climate change is real, it’s here, and it’s getting worse.

It lays out a myriad of impacts, unlivable heat waves, widespread hunger and drought, rising sea levels that will force millions from their homes, and the extinction of many species.

For a U.N. agency, the draft language is blunt, saying — quote — “The worst is yet to come, affecting our children’s and grandchildren’s lives much more than our own.”

—“A leaked UN report warns ‘worst is yet to come’ on climate change. Here’s how you can help,”

 NPR, June 23, 2021.

● Hangover:

In the late 1980s the U.N. was already claiming the world had only a decade to solve global warming or face the consequences.

The San Jose Mercury News reported on June 30, 1989 

 

that a “senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.”

That prediction didn’t come true 15 years ago, and the U.N. is sounding the same alarm today.

—“25 Years Of Predicting The Global Warming ‘Tipping Point,’” 

Michael Bastach, the Daily Caller, May 4, 2015.

(Classical reference in headline.)

47Posted at 4:51 pm by Ed Driscoll   

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Socialist Democrat Lies?

 Carbon Tax - Socialist Drivel (INfrastructure?)

More Socialist Democrat Lies? 

There's no mention of Biden's proposed Carbon Tax (Clean Air Act 1992) that will be assessed every time you turn on a light, use hot water, buy home heating oil; Etc. 

You decide!

Few people realize that on page 508 of the 2702 pages that detail the so called “infrastructure bill” there is a not so small surprise.

Buried deep in the Bill is a national per mile user fee designed to make it very expensive to drive.

This fee will apply to both; electric as well as gas powered cars.

The gas powered cars will be hit twice because they already pay a federal gas tax that will likely be increased periodically.

The Bill authorizes a “pilot program” to be run from 2022 to 2026. It does not specify if and how it can become permanent.

The use fee is scheduled to begin at $.08 per mile driven and it will start in 2022.

Therefore if you drive the national average of 12,000 miles per car per year; it will cost you $960 per car as an added tax.

It will affect every American regardless of income. So much for no taxes for anyone making less than $400K per year.

 

In the meantime we keep using the same amount of oil to satisfy our energy needs.

Except that now we don’t produce it anymore; we import it.

It must be that foreign oil pollutes less than our domestic oil.

Or perhaps someone is getting a big cut.

 

Anyway, if the infrastructure bill passes, open up your wallet and be ready to be tracked.

Hopefully if you drive an electric car you will not run out of power on a highway.

Why?

If you drive a gas car you can walk and get a bucket of gas; however,

In the electric car you cannot get a bucket of electricity 

Britain Goes Nuclear

 BRITAIN GETS SERIOUS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING: 

Government poised to approve 16 mini nuclear reactors to hit net zero. 

“Ministers are understood to have adopted a ‘change of focus’ towards nuclear power amid the current crisis caused by rocketing global wholesale gas prices.”

Plus: “Chancellor Rishi Sunak is said to have made clear in a meeting on Friday that he thought nuclear should play a more prominent role in future energy policy. A source close to Mr Sunak said his general view was that Britain should have had a weightier focus on nuclear ‘ten years ago, when it was cheaper’ but added that the country ‘can’t rely’ on wind and solar power.” Well, he’s right.

73Posted at 5:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds   

Climate Change TERRORISTS

Climate Change TERRORISTS 

The New Hotness? Destroying Industrial Infrastructure. The New Yorker asks: 

Should the Climate Movement Embrace Sabotage?

Here’s a May New Republic article on Malm: 

The Climate Case for Property Destruction.

 Andreas Malm’s “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” urges activists to turn to tougher tactics:

What, then, is to be done? The main argument of How to Blow Up a Pipeline is simple: The climate movement should itself enact, through direct action, that prohibition on new fossil fuel infrastructure, and that dismantling of existing pipelines and power plants, which governments have so far refused to take on. Only if such equipment is damaged often and badly enough as to make its continued operation unprofitable does the stabilization of the climate stand a chance. For climate activists to confine themselves to peaceful protest is meanwhile to watch the earth become less and less hospitable to human life. Plenty of readers will react (as I did) with a sort of instinctive skepticism to Malm’s case that only widespread property destruction can forestall civilizational suicide, but his case deserves a hearing.

Emphasis mine. Note that this is the same leftist media that went all-out to blame Sarah Palin’s clip art for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords in 2011, but they’ll all look the other way about their role in egging on domestic terrorism, if there is an attack on a refinery.

As Jonah Goldberg wrote in response to then-Vice President Biden calling the Tea Party “terrorists” eight months after all of the new civility language that Obama and the DNC-MSM pumped out that January in response to the Giffords shooting:

 To Hell with You People.

Flashback:

 Biden Land Management nominee ‘collaborated with eco-terrorists,’ traded testimony for immunity.

UPDATE: 

The Media is Whitewashing and Mainstreaming a Call to Terrorism.

 “The media’s response to How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Swedish Marxist author Andreas Malm has been a master class in the use of vague evasive academic language to make it seem harmless and courageous, the destruction of a paradigm, rather than people’s lives.”

(Updated and bumped.)

320Posted at 12:35 pm by Ed Driscoll   

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