Climate Change
Man-made climate change due to the "pollutant" carbon dioxide (CO2) will destroy civilization! We must take drastic measures to save the planet now! This has been the multi-decade international campaign of some scientists, Hollywood types, leftist politicians and the media, popularized by the 2006 documentary film with Al Gore, "An Inconvenient Truth". The upcoming 5th Assessment report [AR5] of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is being trumpeted as further proof (they are now 95% sure of man-made global warming). The Gray Area actually believes that humans are doing harm to the environment, but the facts don't support that climate change is affected by humans. This is not just from the 2009 "climategate" scandal, but a growing number of scientists also agree. This will come as heresy to the leftists who have built their belief systems or careers on this campaign, but it is nonetheless true - facts don't support the claim. The Global Warming Primer, Second Edition, by the NCPA provides counterpoints to the film's message. "The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today." The Earth has had cyclical weather patterns since its creation. Ice sheets covered and retreated around the globe four times. We are currently in the 5th warming cycle over the last 400,000 years, and it is the least severe, according to "The Big Picture" at www.climate4you.com. There is scientific data ad-nausea-um on the subject of climate change at that site. So why the high volume messaging that man-made climate change exists - follow the money and the political advantage that comes from it. Government funding for academic research, growth of government bureaucracies, excuse for raising taxes, tax payer funded subsidies and a big lure for charitable donations. So, as you read the left and right positions on climate change below, remember, the truth is "petroleum saved the whales", "coal saved the forests" and "wealthier is healthier".

Many Climate Ambitions End With 2021

1/4/22
from The Wall Street Journal,
12/30/22:

In the U.K., Germany and France, leaders walk back as their plans’ exorbitant price tag becomes clear.

The biggest, most entertaining and also most telling climb-downs are happening in the U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson in October unveiled an ambitious policy program to get Britain to net-zero carbon-dioxide emissions by 2050. It was Mr. Johnson’s public-relations coup ahead of the COP26 global climate conference he hosted in Glasgow. It also was unusual in its honesty about what such environmental ambitions will cost individual households and businesses—a point politicians usually avoid for all the obvious reasons. Sure enough, the backtracks and U-turns began before that document was written. The most controversial component of Mr. Johnson’s net-zero boondoggle concerns an attempt to steer households away from the gas boilers on which 86% of them rely for hot water and central heating.

The net-zero gimmick will be with us for a long while yet, alas. The green true believers (or are they bitter clingers?) are busy devising rear-guard actions by which to insulate environmentalism from real-world political pressures, not least by enlisting gullible or cynical titans of finance to do via pension-fund investment allocations what can’t be done honestly via legislation. The political class remains rhetorically wedded to its earlier foolhardy promises, and the media is too enamored of reality-detached activists such as Ms. Thunberg. All the smarter then for politicians to resolve to discuss the matter as little as possible in the year ahead. As starving the atmosphere of carbon dioxide becomes a political liability, starving the issue of political oxygen will become the electoral tactic of choice.

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