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Tidbits

28 Aug 2024 | News Roundup
  • Matthew Zeitlin at Heatmap strokes his lack of long grey beard and proclaims that “It’s Getting Harder to Close a Coal Plant”. And why? Well, it seems that, wonder of wonders, “Fossil fuel plant retirements are slowing down, and projected load growth is to blame.” But we shouldn’t be too sarcastic since it actually is helpful that, though he couches it in some indirect verbiage, he’s actually noticed that our lives depend on abundant power that wind and solar can’t provide. And any debate grounded in obvious truths is a good thing, and in this case, an overdue one.
  • From the “person with a hammer” file, the New York Times “Climate Forward” seeks “climate workers” for American Samoa as some former American serviceperson “realized that rising seas and worsening storms, fueled by climate change, had brought new problems to her homeland, while exacerbating old ones.” Problems like people thinking weather is a new problem, for instance, or endlessly mentioning “worsening storms” that no data show happening.
  • Same file: “How Food Banks Prevented 1.8 Million Metric Tons of Carbon Emissions Last Year/ Redistributing food to food banks before it’s tossed or wasted doesn’t just fight hunger – such efforts also fight climate change”. This item being from Scientific American, which almost literally cannot now send out an email without some bizarre climate reference in it. You know what? You can, with a clean conscience, give to a food bank to fight hunger, and not worry whether the homeless will have a colder winter in consequence.
  • You just cannot please these people. Bjorn Lomborg highlights an item in, of all places, the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” about how “Desertification was supposed to be the ‘greatest environmental challenge of our time.’ Why are experts now worried about greening?” and X-grouses that “Campaigners used to tell us that desertification was the "greatest environmental challenge of our time"/ They were wrong/ CO₂ is making the world greener almost everywhere/ And – of course – now greening is bad (for deserts)/ You just can't make this up”. Nor, if you were sane, would you want to.
  • Ottawa Hydro emails propaganda about “how we're working towards a carbon-free future right here in Ottawa” and suggests, as if we were idiots who couldn’t realize it was mid-August and we’d like to go on a nature trip, that “It’s not too late to get that last camping trip in before summer ends.” And then they ask “Why not make it an electricity-free one in the great outdoors with the whole family?” and the answer is because then the headlamps wouldn’t work. Or the car, from the fuel injection to the speedometer. Duh.
  • But you said the science was settled: The Economist suddenly blurts out that “BASKING IN THE sun has been considered a health hazard for at least four decades” because UV light “can increase the chances of skin cancer” as well as making you wrinkly and old-looking. But now “new research suggests it may be time to consider the benefits…. increased UV exposure appears to make people significantly less likely to die from cardiovascular disease as well as cancer. The risk of dying from melanoma skin cancer, the deadliest form of skin cancer, did not meaningfully change with UV exposure…. this is the largest study to show a direct correlation between UV exposure and longer lifespans.” Egad. The government sanctimoniously botched the science and ordered us all about like children? What next? Mask mandates? Forced EV purchases? But no. That would be silly.

5 comments on “Tidbits”

  1. I give away most of my small garden's produce to the local food bank.And no,I don't do this to reduce carbon emissions.

  2. Climate change, as far as the vast majority is concerned, ceased to be a science (if it ever was) and has become a religion. The West has largely given up on Christianity, but this has left an large but generally unnoticed spiritual gap in peoples' lives. Rather than go to church on a Sunday and confess your sins, you can now be made to feel mildly guilty all week long by climate alarmists and then make restitution for your sinful lifestyle by buying overpriced products that are marketed as 'green'. Alleluia!

  3. “It’s Getting Harder to Close a Coal Plant”
    COAL, GAS, OR HYDRO plants MUST EXIST because they are the equivalent to the “batteries” that wind and solar DON’T have at night and when the wind isn’t blowing, and batteries were never budgeted for by the renewables pushers . Those batteries would at least double the cost of renewables if they had to have them to provide power for one day of no sun or wind. On top of that the nameplate of the renewables would have to be twice as high… to supply grid power and charge the batteries at the same time.
    Yet we let people who aren’t good at math or rationality be in charge of spending taxpayers dollars…

  4. Yet we let people who aren’t good at math or rationality be in charge of spending taxpayers dollars…

    They aren't good at physics either, including electricity, nor weather, which means everything to wind turbines or solar panels.
    Even in common-sense SK we're still building more wind turbines. They still do not understand that common high-pressure atmospheric conditions bring NO wind, and those same conditions cause high summer temperatures and low winter temperatures, both because of a lack of cloud cover. No electricity when you need it the most. The stark lack of the decision-makers' education in these matters is expensive and life-threatening.

  5. The sky is falling dogma doesn't pass the sniff test if climate change always and only produces negative effects, and never anything positive. It's not as if the pre-industrial climate was perfect, just what humanity was used to and had changed over the millennia anyway.

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