- Many viewers of our videos on YouTube have complained, or complimented us, on the invariable addition of a blue banner warning that the UN thinks we are naughty deniers. And recently Wei Zhang complained on X that he wasn’t on the Tortoise Media list of wicked climate skeptics, so we went and looked and to our delight we were. Alas, they’ve now deleted the post or blocked us or something; sic transit gloria mundi. But sure enough we’re all over their database. Bwa ha ha ha!
- We are all going to die part 47: According to USA Today there’s no tomorrow. “Study warns Earth nearing multiple catastrophic climate tipping points”. As if a thing could tip over multiple times. And you know whose fault it is: “The climate keeps changing, despite the Trump administration’s attempt to silence the entire phenomenon.” What’s more, the story panics, “These points of no return are specific moments when the planet has warmed so much that certain effects become irreversible.” Points of no return. So you could pass a point of no return, after which there’s no return, then pass another one, and another. Sort of like having ten years to save the planet… save the planet… save the planet…
- When in doubt, keep digging: The New York Times “Climate Forward” produces a “Climate Fix”, supposedly “our twice-a-month guide to the most important solutions to climate change across the world” and recently it was the world’s biggest plane. And that will help how? Well see apparently wind turbines are doing so well that the blades are getting so big they “often can’t be easily shipped across aging roads and bridges.” And of course “the industry is now facing an even bigger problem: President Trump’s antipathy toward wind power.” But sauntering to the rescue is “Radia, a company based in Boulder, Colo.” which “has been working on developing what would be the world’s largest plane, one that it said would have a dozen times the cargo volume of a Boeing 747.” For a decade. Still no plane. What could go wrong? Other than the carbon emissions from something with a dozen times the cargo volume of a 747? Though if it never gets off the ground that one will solve itself.
- We still occasionally get people thinking peer review is the gold standard for studies of climate and anything else. But as Lynne Cohen wrote earlier this year in C2C Journal, the evidence grows increasingly strong that academia has totally lost the plot when it comes to keeping research honest, never mind reliable. It’s getting to the point where “peer reviewed” means “do not trust”.
- A small item in the San Bernardino Sun (and yes, we at CDN cast our net widely) reports on a double fatality after a single-vehicle crash into a tree where “The vehicle, which appeared to be a Tesla, burst into flames after hitting the tree.” It doesn’t get into much of the evidently gory detail, including that they only realized there had been two people in the car once the fire was finally extinguished and weren’t sure who was driving. But it notes that “A hazardous materials team was called in to deal with the vehicle fire and its lithium batteries.” And it just won’t do, especially in a society that tends to hypersensitivity about safety on the environment in particular, to overlook that whatever the merits of EVs, they do as currently constructed carry some major risks.
- It’s also surely relevant that EVs are not the saviours of Planet Earth that their less level-headed advocates claim. Thus Blacklock’s Reporter informs us that “Electric transit buses are so impractical in Canada they require diesel heaters to extend battery life in winter conditions, say federal researchers. The National Research Council studied the vehicles’ feasibility four years after then-Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna promised billions in subsidies to make the ‘planet safe.’” But they won’t make the planet safe, or their occupants.
- The American left continues to rally round the red tape, with NPR echoing others’ complaints with a piece warning that “The Trump Administration has dismissed the scientists working on the country's flagship climate report, a move that threatens to curtail climate science and make information about global warming less available to the public.” Unless, of course, they have the internet on their computers and can, say, look up IPCC or something. Plus as Matthew Wielicki retorts, the report in question, the National Climate Assessment, was a classic instance of bureaucratic capture by radicals rather than balanced and authoritative science.
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14 May 2025 | News Roundup
