Tidbits

Weather Fox asks “What Would Happen If Climate Anxiety Became Widespread?” Uh, it’d be just like today. Next question please.
The New York Times warns (h/t Matthew Wielicki) that “At the most likely rate of rise, some experts say, most of the beaches on the East Cost of the United States would be gone in 25 years.” But the warning was issued 30 years ago, in 1995, so they should be long gone but obviously aren’t. And they also warned “They are already disappearing at an average of 2 to 3 feet a year.” Wrong again.
An alert viewer/reader reminds us that in the dark days when the Conservatives ruled Canada and ate the climate, Prime Minister and Dark Lord Stephen Harper… uh… gave $200 million to green projects in B.C. including the “hydrogen highway”. Oh, they have one of those? Well, no. Back in 2007 the idea was for seven fueling stations, a fleet of gleaming buses and a lot of talk. Now there are five stations, mostly gathering dust, nobody even knows where the buses are and the project closed in 2011. Still, hydrogen has a bright future and always will.
From the “unless it’s not” file, the once-venerable Times bellows “Cities and towns across the UK face a future of scorching summer days and temperatures exceeding 45C thanks to climate change, according to the Met Office.” And it hardly seems helpful to respond that if so, it won’t be “thanks to climate change” it will be climate change, when the scenario is so absurd you’d think both the Met and the Times would be ashamed to say it. But they don’t embarrass easy and it’s irresistible clickbait. The Times story says “Writing in the journal Weather, a team of Met Office scientists used computer models to simulate how likely the country is to see a repeat of the unprecedented 40C recorded three years ago.” Yeah. Including the 40.3C recorded on a military airbase in the jet wash from landing planes. We can get you that any time. As for their computer model, it should be incinerated. Along with the journalistic practice of going mental over a study and not including a link to it. Et tu, Times? Though funnily enough while looking for it we found an item in Weather about how Britain has never again had a May heatwave like the one in… uh… 1944. Climate change ate my D-Day, what?
It’s ye end. According to CNN, “Scientists looked back in time to find the first signs of human-caused global warming. It’s far earlier than previously thought”. So much for settled science, you may sneer… though we beat you to it. But what makes this a classic illustration of how on climate you can say just anything is that it claims “Using a combination of scientific theory, modern observations and multiple, sophisticated computer models, researchers found a clear signal of human-caused climate change was likely discernible with high confidence as early as 1885, just before the advent of gas-powered cars but after the dawn of the industrial revolution.” So not, um, actual data from 1885 then? No. Instead they look at stratospheric cooling which the models say should accompany tropospheric warming though it’s all highly speculative. But if it were true, if the tiny amounts of CO2 humans were adding 140 years ago, could really make a measurable difference, then clearly the climate’s sensitivity to CO2 (aka ECS) is so high that it should be swinging disastrously all over the place faced by minor fluctuations and, certainly, blazing away by about 1940 with the wretched gas car invented and all. So naturally the researchers issue a clarion call for… more research money to go to them. Detected that early, didn’t you?
From the red green show Oxfam, which started life commendably and even rather touchingly as the “Oxford Committee for Famine Relief” in 1942 in Oxford in the United Kingdom, has somehow morphed into one more deranged leftist outfit that sides with Iran and Hamas against Israel and demands in response to the G7 Summit in Kananaskis (or anything else, we dare say) that “Climate finance and fossil fuel phase out must be prioritized as countries work towards a just transition that benefits everyone.” Oh yeah. Because nothing says end hunger in poor countries like shutting down their economies.
The late half-great Nikita S. Khrushchev once said that politicians are the same everywhere, they will promise to build you a bridge where there is no river. And modern politicians will promise to build you a solar facility where there is no sun. In this case in Watson Lake, Yukon. (No, we didn’t know either but it’s just a short drive down 4 from Tuchitua and east of Way The Heck And Gone, though in a fit of grandiosity “The Town of Watson Lake annexed Two Mile and Two and One-Half Mile Village on January 2, 2016”.) Supposedly “Investing in green energy infrastructure is vital to building cleaner and more sustainable northern communities” and “With a joint investment of more than $28.6 million from the federal government, the Government of Yukon and First Kaska Utilities LP, the Sādę Solar Initiative project will significantly reduce diesel use for power generation in Watson Lake.” North of the 60^th parallel. Which to be fair is some 6° south of the Arctic Circle where the sun literally does not rise for at least one winter day, on the Solstice. But still…
According to Israel-hating Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May, her local bishop “went up, believe it or not, in a cherry picker, a bucket, to the roof of the church hall to bless the solar panels. We had prepared and worshipped together with a liturgy for the blessing of solar panels.” As a New York Times columnist wrote on Earth Day that some survey found that “On average… people who are less religious tend to be more concerned about climate change. Leaders from many religious traditions have sought to change that by raising awareness in their communities about global warming and biodiversity loss. Francis was undeniably the most prominent example…. Francis’ death comes at a time when despair has been biting at the environmental movement. The Trump administration is denying climate science and promoting fossil fuels, the main driver of global warming.” Not that we’re using the Gospel to promote worldly ends, you understand. We’re just so Christlike we’re insufferable. It happens.

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