- All the news that’s fit to ditch: Robert Bryce explains why he’s giving up on the New York Times. His first objection is a massive price increase but, he goes on to say, the reason it’s “absurd” is that despite loving newspapers and once regarding the Times, for all its flaws, as indispensable, it’s no longer the “paper of record” but a joke. It has scrupulously avoided a proper investigation of the origins of COVID, driving its own former science writers to publish on that topic elsewhere; it “hasn’t written a word about Michael Mann’s embarrassing losses in his defamation case against his critics”, its “energy reporting is often laughably bad” and Substack is proving yet again that if the legacy media can’t or won’t up its game, the competitors will leave it in the dust.
- All the news you can’t ignore: We mentioned a few weeks back that even the enthusiasts at Heatmap admitted the enormous toxic battery fire in Moss Landing, California, was triggering opposition to EV batteries even among progressive locals. And now Bloomberg runs a piece on how, um, the enormous toxic battery fire in Moss Landing, California, was triggering opposition to EV batteries even among progressive locals. They try to brush it aside with their brush, saying “industry analysts don’t expect the fire and its backlash to stop the spread of big batteries, because utilities have powerful incentives to keep installing them.” But at least they concede that “future battery proposals could require more community engagement with potential neighbors and local officials. And not all will win approval.” For some strange reason.
- Climate Cosmos asks, via MSN, “Is Climate Change Putting Your Favorite Animal at Risk?” To which we respond well of course, as in of course they say so. Unless your favourite animal is ugly. Only after which we checked the actual piece and there goes an elk, deer or moose, the polar bears, a flock of geese, Crush (son of Mr. Turtle), a cheetah (and a small porpoise called the vaquita), some hot peppers (we didn’t even know they were animals), and wait. What’s this? A hideous microscopic infectious horror? Oh, of course. This slide is labeled “Increased Disease and Parasites”. Nasty and ugly flourishes. Cute and gentle perishes. Including another turtle. Then comes the Paris Climate Agreement, not on our list of approved fauna. And of course a rhinoceros and its cute kid. (Technically “calf”.) See? No tarantula, mosquito or warthog in the bunch.
- So you didn’t really mean it after all? The government of the Canadian province of New Brunswick tries to elbow Elon Musk for the egregious sin of trying to make the American government less bloated by selling off its once-vaunted Teslas. All 11 of them, out of a total government vehicle fleet of over 4,000. That’s some electrification program. Or not because Premier Susan Holt, apparently thinking it sounded like a boast, declared that ““Right now, they’re sitting in a parking lot not being used. And so it’s value lost.” Having bought them “pre-owned”, a slick salesperson word here meaning “used”, for a bargain-basement $82,000 each, and then parked them. Saving the planet one laughable virtue-signal at a time.
- Oh, and by the way, “New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt announced on Monday a comprehensive review of the province’s debt-laden electric utility…. All options will be considered for the utility and its operations because with soaring power bills for customers, ‘the status quo is no longer an option,’ the premier said.” The problem is all options are not on the table and the ones that are excluded are the cheap reliable ones. And that today’s unacceptable status quo was yesterday’s bright idea.
- Finally, hooray for Donald Trump? The New York Times “Climate Forward” emails “How Trump might unwittingly cut emissions from online shopping”. And the accompanying story says “Tariffs might make fast fashion less fast. That would dent emissions.” It seems Americans order a lot of cheap junk garments from China “in part because of a tariff exemption that’s helped to keep prices low on packages shipped from China” which Trump has now closed. “Last year, 1.36 billion packages entered the United States through that loophole, which is known as the de minimis exemption and allows goods worth less than $800 to enter the country without tariffs. The largest source of shipments under the exemption was China, and most of those packages crossed the ocean by plane, according to data from Customs and Border Protection. And that means a lot of planet-warming emissions: Flying a package across the sea is 68 times more carbon-intensive than shipping it by ocean freight, according to the Climate Action Accelerator, a nonprofit group based in Switzerland.” Not to mention issues with labour standards, ignoring patents and slipping some fentanyl in with the shirts. And shoddy bad taste. They manage not to thank Trump, though.
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30 Apr 2025 | News Roundup
