Worst Climate Stories of the Week (When Intersectionality Collides)
The climate stories this week strike a bit of a tragic tone, as allies in the fight to save the world end up fighting each other.
Of course, that can cause endless amusement for those who don’t share their cultish climate catastrophism. Really, that’s why this weekly column exists—to point out the absurdities when viewpoints collide, whether that be with reality, or each other. Or, more often than not, both.
And, oh what collisions we have this week!
We have electric vehicle (EV) charging stations undermined by DEI requirements, winter weather in June ruining the global warming narrative, an ancient pagan monument defaced by environmental activists, and a scientific study shows that global warming makes the hot air coming from politicians less intelligent.
Come to think of it, that last bit is almost believable.
Anyway, we also have the “billion dollar disaster” scam exposed. Our almost-weekly EV implosion section has another instance of an EV maker going kaput.
Speaking of good news, this week a little-noticed bipartisan bill began the revitalization of nuclear power in America, and a climatologist reports an inconvenient truth about air temperature and hurricane activity.
Let’s intersectionalize!
EV Charging Stations Derailed by DEI
Last month, Restoration News reported on the comical results of the Biden infrastructure investment, in which $7.5 billion in subsidies produced a grand total of seven EV charging stations across America. This week, the Washington Free Beacon shed more light on the reasons for the program’s utter failure. They report that the delay in installing the stations resulted, “in large part,” from the White House’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives:
But internal memos from the Department of Transportation obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, as well as interviews with those who are responsible for overseeing the implementation of the electric vehicle charging station project, say the delay is in large part a result of the White House’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
“These requirements are screwing everything up,” said one senior Department of Transportation staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It’s all a mess.”
The initiatives include “outreach to underserved communities” so that grantees demonstrate “meaningful public involvement” from “disadvantaged communities.” In essence, they can’t build anything until every single resident has the opportunity to share their feelings about it.
We might be here a while, folks.
Snowstorms Interrupt Global Warming
As we’ve all heard, global warming will completely screw up our weather, making things unbearably hot for all mankind. Inconveniently, however, Idaho and Montana decided to ring in the first week of summer with a snow storm. Some parts of the region saw up to 15 inches of global warming . . . err . . . snow. Mt. Hood, in Oregon, saw seven inches of new snow, before the storm moved east and covered Wyoming and Colorado as well. Billings, MT, and Nanton, AB set record low temperatures, and Australia saw frost and their own record lows. But UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres continues to assure us we’ve entered the era of global boiling.
Climate Zealots Deface Their Own Pagan Symbols For Mother Gaia
The Just Stop Oil cultists are at it again. This week, they spray-painted Stonehenge, in the name of Scientism. You gotta wonder how many petrochemicals are in that paint:
Science Says Global Warming Makes Politicians Dumb
If you thought you’d seen the end of weird things blamed on climate change, think again. The supply is never-ending. Case in point: politicians are getting dumber due to climate change. The science says so. A new study in the academic journal Cell made this claim:
Climate change carries important effects on human wellbeing and performance, and increasingly research is documenting the negative impacts of out-of-comfort temperatures on workplace performance. In this study, we investigate the plausibly causal effect of extreme temperatures, i.e., out-of-comfort, on language complexity among politicians, leveraging a fixed effects strategy. We analyze language complexity in over seven million parliamentary speeches across eight countries, connecting them with precise daily meteorological information. We find hot days reduce politicians’ language complexity, but not cold days. Focusing on one country, we explore marginal effects by age and gender, suggesting high temperatures significantly impact older politicians at lower thresholds. The findings propose that political rhetoric is not only driven by political circumstances and strategic concerns but also by physiological responses to external environmental factors. Overall, the study holds important implications on how climate change could affect human cognitive performance and the quality of political discourse.
Because apparently politicians don’t have air conditioning, and humans can’t adapt to temperature variation. The leaps to conclusions here look like someone trying to jump over the Grand Canyon. Not exactly burnishing the reputation of peer-reviewed journals here.
Don’t Believe the Billion-Dollar Disaster Lies
Meteorologist Roger Pielke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado, published an article this month that actually does a service to the peer-review process (unlike our previous entry). Titled, “Scientific integrity and U.S. ‘Billion Dollar Disasters,’” the paper scientifically proves false the claims that the number of super-expensive natural disasters in the U.S. has increased. Pielke says in the abstract, “public claims promoted by NOAA associated with the dataset and its significance are flawed and at times misleading.”
This week, he expanded on the subject on his Substack, revealing an “absence of methodological transparency” in NOAA’s datasets on the expenses involved in natural disasters. In fact, NOAA flatly refused, multiple times, to share any methodology used in analyzing the data. Pielke writes in this week’s update, “It is clear that NOAA is risking a significant science scandal — simply because the agency has implemented flawed methodological choices with the resulting effect, in each instance, of artificially boosting counts of billion-dollar disasters, and there is no methodological or data transparency that would allow NOAA to justify these choices.”
This Week In Imploding EVs
If you guessed this week saw another EV manufacturer filing bankruptcy, you win a planet-choking, carbon-emitting cigar! Fox News reports:
Henrik Fisker is out of gas, again.
The automotive designer’s California-based electric vehicle startup, Fisker, filed for bankruptcy protection late on Monday and will seek to sell its assets and restructure its debt after hemorrhaging cash on its “Ocean” SUV line in the U.S. and Canada.
The company joins other would-be Tesla competitors such as Proterra, Lordstown and Electric Last Mile Solutions, which each went bankrupt in the past two years after depleting cash reserves, fundraising hurdles and production challenges related to global supply-chain issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Fisker vehicles were also under investigation by U.S. regulators.
Now for some good news . . .
Nuclear Power Is Back On the Nice List
Again from Roger Pielke Jr.:
Good to see nuclear has become clean energy again, after decades wandering in the wilderness.
Hurricanes Are Less Frequent and Intense As the Climate Warms
Despite the doomsaying by the climate cultists, hurricanes might become less frequent under global temperature rise. So says climatologist David Legates, professor emeritus at the University of Delaware. Appearing on the Daily Signal Podcast, he said:
[Less hurricanes] are making landfall, which should be a good thing to write home about. I know news likes to say, let’s pick on the bad stuff. If it bleeds, it leads, but this is a good news to write home about that if there’s something in that signal, it’s a good signal.
Legates went on to report the period of highest hurricane activity, both in intensity and number making landfall, occurred during the coldest parts of the last 400 years. The 19th century saw the lowest temperatures, and had more intense storms making landfall in the U.S. Meanwhile, he says, “If we have warmer periods, the hurricane activity tends to drop off.”
So fire up that SUV, baby, and let’s make it warm up in here!
