Tidbits

This just in: Rome falls, climate to blame. OK, in some ways it’s old news, though not as old as Gibbon’s Rome falls, Christianity to blame. But National Geographic suddenly admits not only that there was a Roman Warm Period, and that it was natural, but that it was good, and that the Dark Ages Cooling Period, also natural, was bad. (The piece also blames plagues, which in turn it blames on the Romans’ success in building big cities; but one consequence of it getting colder and stormier is that crops fail, leaving humans more vulnerable to disease.) But it even claims that an improvement in the weather in the fourth century helped the revitalization often attributed to vigorous and less-than-typically-depraved Emperors. And that bad weather including droughts then created floods of climate refugees then known as “Huns” and so on. And here everyone had been saying that warmer weather was inherently bad and then worse because of more storms and extremes, only to have history say “non tam celeriter”. And even more amazingly, for a mainstream publication to repeat it.
This also just in: climate alarmist sees light. Not one of those road-to-Damascus deals where they become skeptics. But rather, and commendably, one of those suddenly-notices-difficulties-are-real deals. David Gelles in the New York Times “Climate Forward”, under the bitter heading “How to Abandon Your Climate Commitments and Get Away With It” (which he probably didn’t write) notes how fast companies like Coca Cola have backed off once flashy climate pledges. And after noting various causes including Orange Man Bad on Climate, he blurts out: “But the waning climate ambition across corporate America often has an even simpler explanation: Many companies have concluded it is simply too difficult and too expensive to drastically reduce planet warming emissions, especially at a moment of rising energy demand.” Correct. Of course it’s not the end of the story, especially if you believe the crisis is real and even worsening. But to confess that it’s actually hard, and many are still trying even while wrestling with the difficulties, is a huge step forward on insisting that it’s dead simple and only evil morons could raise questions (like the protestors heckling Microsoft at PNW Climate Week including ranting “Microsoft is enabling genocide in Palestine.”). And we’ll meet him part-way: Pepsi claiming to be all in on the crisis then postponing its targets and fiddling the measurement is annoying, and it’s infuriating that its CEO then babbled “Our goals must evolve with us to keep our ambition”. Maybe he should go into politics.
From the “summer is still good” files, even Parks Canada (by email) “is excited to invite paddlers and outdoor enthusiasts to one of the most unique paddling events in the country, Lock & Paddle 2026! Join us on Saturday, August 15 at 1:30 p.m. at Hartwells Lockstation on the Rideau Canal National Historic Site for a mass paddling adventure like no other.” Not in October or March. In midsummer.
USA Today asks “Could we stop El Niño by brightening clouds? New study explores how”. Happily the subhed is “Scientists say marine cloud brightening could weaken El Niño by cooling key Pacific waters, but major questions remain about feasibility, risks and global oversight.” Yeah. Major questions like “Stop El Niño? Are you insane?” Are we so wise, or so powerful, that we can decide a major ocean current is bad and make it stop, and have things improve? Or just as conceited as we are inept?
Incoming UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham, whose tenure we anticipate will be short and dismal, took the vaguely promising first step of removing the VAT (like a sales tax but levied on the “value added” at each stage in the production chain) on Britons’ household energy bills. Thus admitting that energy in Britain costs too much. But doing nothing about producing more of it… and since the British government’s appetite for citizens’ cash is undiminished, it will have to take more somewhere else. (The initial explanation was that the foregone revenue would be recouped by cancelling the “digital ID scheme”, the PM alas evidently not realizing the latter hadn’t been funded yet anyway.) See short and dismal above.
Another way the climate obsession is not harmless: with Canada’s vaunted (or at least “world-famous in Canada”) health system crumbling, as waiting lists lengthen, patients suffer and practitioners burn out while government budgets burn, Ottawa is diverting hospital funding into… energy efficiency. “The Honourable David J. McGuinty, Minister of National Defence, on behalf of the Honourable Julie Dabrusin, Minister of the Environment, Climate Change and Nature, will make an important energy efficiency announcement at CHEO, a globally renowned health institution in Ottawa.” Wait until they discover how much energy they could save by not treating patients. And of course with Canada’s military in equally ghastly disarray, “Government of Canada unveils first net-zero-emissions-ready apartments for Canadian Armed Forces members at CFB Edmonton”. Priorities, priorities.
Also it tends to set money on fire. As the libertarian Reason Foundation’s @ReasonTV explains, the way American politicians spray money at everything including climate resulted in a set of requirements for carbon reduction that were satisfied by San Bernardino, California spending nearly a million dollars to patch one small sidewalk corner under the Carbon Reduction Program so people would walk instead of... uh, hey, they did the work in 2023, got the money in 2024 and dug it up again in 2025.

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