- Martin Durkin’s highly anticipated documentary Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth) is out and despite predictable efforts by YouTube and other platforms to stop it from being seen it is turning into a global hit. Do check it out. The link is to a Rumble version which should escape the censors.
- The Daily Skeptic reports that “Green billionaires are pouring money into discreet campaigns to persuade Hollywood writers to catastrophise the climate in future film and television scripts.” An outfit called Good Energy is telling writers that having characters show “anger, depression, grief or other emotion” over the climate crisis will make them more “relatable.” Sure, if you happen to be a neurotic alarmist already. Los Angeles-based Good Energy is, naturally, funded by billionaire foundations like Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Sierra Club and the Climate Emergency Fund; the latter of which is also a funder of the Just Stop Oil pests. Just what Hollywood needs after it chased away half its audience with wokery: scold the remaining half about the supposed climate crisis.
- While Canada’s Trudeau Administration reinvents the economy, our society and in its spare time brings Mideast peace, we read the strange news that “the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, which the Trudeau government purchased from Kinder Morgan in 2018, will cost $3.1 billion more than the $30.9 billion projected last May, bringing the total cost to about $34 billion – more than six times the original estimate.” And it’s nowhere near done. So they can do easy stuff like change the weather… but not hard things like twin an already existing pipeline.
- And another thing. Blacklock’s Reporter tells us “Small business has received 14¢ on the dollar in carbon tax rebates promised four years ago, says Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault.” Naturally he makes it sound like achievement: “The Government of Canada is committed to ensuring the success of small and medium sized enterprises that are the backbone of the economy. That is why there are a range of supports in place to help small and medium sized enterprises.” But the fact is that, Blacklock’s adds, “Of 856 businesses that applied for rebates a total 723 were ‘approved in principle’ and ‘approximately 400’ received payments. No reason was given for the delay. Small business rebates totaled $31 million of the $218 million Climate Action Incentive Fund, the equivalent of 14 percent.” So they can fix the weather. But they cannot give out free money. Which surely is among the easiest things for politicians to do, and one they practice a lot.
- Go woke, go broke? Bloomberg informs us that “Aaron Kinsey, the Republican chairman of Texas State Board of Education, said that the $53 billion Texas Permanent School Fund had delivered an official notice to BlackRock ‘terminating its financial management of approximately $8.5 billion in Texas’ assets.’” Which has to hurt. BlackRock was unimpressed, or claimed to be, saying it would just hurt schools financially. Which is true if BlackRock despite its dabbling in green wokery is on the whole a prudent manager. But rather than gloat, we want to observe that “Kinsey said that the leadership of the fund decided to do so in order to comply with a 2021 law that restricts investments with companies that engage in so-called boycotts of the fossil fuels industry.” And really we don’t want politics intruding in investment decisions even when it’s in a direction we instinctively sympathize with.
- It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a perpetual motion machine. Scientific American gushes that “Your Next Flight’s Fuel Could Be Made By Microbes/ The aviation industry is getting ready to embrace fuel produced by fermentation”. And it won’t release carbon? Um uh well see the idea is that “Organisms that ferment gas can use industrial carbon dioxide emissions as a feedstock. Such gas fermentation is not nearly as well developed as traditional fermentation, in which microbes are fed sugars or other biomass — including crops. But both biomass or gas-based approaches are amenable to genetically manipulating selected microbial strains and then growing them for fermentation in large tanks.” None of which changes the fact that burning fossil fuels to get CO2 works precisely because it releases energy on balance (a lot of it, in fact) so thanks to Newton’s wretched 2nd law, turning CO2 back into fuel uses it up (a lot of it, in fact). There is no free lunch, in economics or in nature.
- In other lack of news, “Streak over. After 17 consecutive March days with maximum temperature ≥2°C in #Ottawa, the maximum temperature was only 1.1°C yesterday. We made it to 7th place, only 11 days behind the record.” Which sounds impressive until you reflect that since March has 31 days, an 11-day gap is massive. Ah, but there’s a trend, right? Well, no. The longest stretch with highs ≥2°C was 28 days or basically the whole month, in practically “pre-industrial” 1903 (the baseline for that misused term often being 1850-1900). Second, at 25, was in 2010. But third was 1995, tied with 1983. Fourth was 1946 and fifth was 1953, while trailing blazing melty 2024 (and NB 2023 is nowhere to be seen) were 1936, 1931, 1927 and um 1898. So maybe there is a trend. March in Ottawa used to be a lot warmer on average.
- The great and powerful Mann declares on X that “The @GOP has to be destroyed for America to survive…. A party that coddles racism, misogyny, bigotry, nativism, fascism, hatred, hypocrisy and dishonesty, has no place in this or any country.” Deep thoughts there from the science.
I watched Climate,the Movie.Well worth the time spent.The scientists interviewed all make clear that dissenting views are not permitted by the
Climate Alarmist Complex.It usually results in censure,defunding,even dismissal.Friends of Science had it available on their latest email.
As I was watching the movie, I wondered how those younger people kept their jobs. Later, we found out they didn't. I am VERY glad I decided against a job in academia almost 50 years ago. My first thesis advisor had friends in the USSR (I needed a different advisor when I decided to become an applied mathematician), and told me stories about their experiences in universities and research institutes there, and these sound eerily like what my friends in American universities describe today.
Amazing that anyone still listens to Piltdown Mann
I wish that those who produced this film had provided an option to order a DVD, instead of depending on streaming services. For me, watching it on Rumble was an exercise in frustration, with ads popping up and automatically interrupting the movie with minutes-long nonsense. Plus, there's the possibility of platforms tampering with (if not censoring outright) the movie, as Vimeo has just done. But once a DVD is in your hands, you have a copy that's almost completely immune to future interference.
Minor nit in the tidbit that includes the statement “ ” None of which changes the fact that burning fossil fuels to get CO2 works precisely because it releases energy on balance (a lot of it, in fact) so thanks to Newton’s wretched 2nd law, turning CO2 back into fuel uses it up (a lot of it, in fact). There is no free lunch, in economics or in nature.”
I believe that you refer to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics which, in effect, states that no reaction is completely reversible without an external source of energy. Your application of it is correct: more energy is needed to recombine CO2 in any industrial process than the energy released in creating it (in fossil fuel combustion or any other reaction in which it is produced.). Newton, however, did not invent or discover the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. It’s development is attributed to Carnot, Clausius, Boltzmann and others. Of course, the 3 Laws of Motion, the Law of Gravity, and Integral Calculus are sufficient to cement Newton as a genius without peer.
Keep spouting the real science.
"Amazing that anyone still listens to Piltdown Mann"
What would truly be amazing would be somebody disagreeing with him! Anyone publicly disagreeing with Mann these days runs the very real risk of bankruptcy! As high priest of climate change orthodoxy nobody in their right mind would dare argue with him. The Mann was a clear example of religious devotes supporting a leader of their faith.
And there's the UK government complaining about a situation they created by creating a policy to fine boiler manufacturers who don't sell enough air source heat pumps:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hk2_hpUpZi4