Worst Climate Stories of the Week (Are the green fantasies coming apart?)

Aug 23, 2024
Jeff Reynolds
Environmentalism

The DNC sets up a spicy sprint to Election Day, with Harris-Walz cutting a clear contrast with the Trump-Vance ticket on every policy imaginable, especially on climate.

So the Democratic National Convention just wrapped up last night, and Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have officially accepted the nomination. Somehow Chicago avoided burning to the ground, despite all the protesters that flew in for the ceremonial rioting. This sets up a spicy sprint to Election Day, with Harris-Walz cutting a clear contrast with the Trump-Vance ticket on every policy imaginable—but particularly on climate, energy, and environmental issues.

We have one candidate, the former president, with a proven track record of getting regulations and red tape out of the federal government. Trump has demonstrated his dedication to putting America in the dominant global position in energy production, having already made us a net exporter in his first term. Meanwhile, Harris and Walz both have a history of frivolous green lawsuits, spending money we don’t have, and exponentially expanding the scope of government in business and personal lives—in the name of saving the climate.

America faces a pretty stark choice. Will we choose success or failure?

(Don't miss last week's column: Liar Liar, Climate on Fire)

The current administration—reminder, the one in which Harris has an important role—has presented a picture of policy failure in comparison to its predecessor. Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed the Senate after Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote. The IRA amounts to over a trillion dollars in new spending, that Al Gore called the biggest environmental spending bill in history.

All that extra spending hasn’t done a thing to lower CO2 emissions, but at least it’s helped push our national debt over $35 trillion. So they’ve got that going for them.

Let’s take a look at this week’s climate insanity, and try to imagine four more years of this under Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

West Coast Ports Face Power Shortages

A funny thing happened on the way to “decarbonizing” California’s deep water ports. A momentary power fluctuation caused all the cranes, vehicles, and other equipment to stop earlier this month, requiring a lengthy reboot period. According to the LA Times,

If the public face of the port is the forest of cranes and mountain range of cargo containers, its invisible heart is a network of computers that controls almost the entire operation. That system, along with a growing multitude of electric-powered equipment and vehicles, depends on an uninterrupted supply of electricity. Rebooting all those smart devices, sometimes requiring workers to climb to the tops of 200-foot cranes, can take several hours, no matter how brief the outage.

This marked the twelfth power outage of 2024 for LA, causing significant disruptions to the port’s operations each time. The Times reports the fluctuations have occurred much more frequently as the port has transitioned to green energy, with the goal of completely phasing out “greenhouse gas emissions” by 2030.

Clean Fuel Projects Collapsing

It’s beginning to look a lot like green energy can’t keep its promises. An article this week tallied all the failures: a company that wanted to create jet fuel out of garbage has shut down; a hydrogen jet fuel startup went out of business; several Big Oil corporations have decided to scale back their biofuels programs; and biofuels and “green hydrogen” companies have started to collapse. One “green fuels” executive summed it up, saying, “The excitement of the early days has not lived up to the hype.”

Who could have seen that coming?

The Hottest Summer Ever Decided Not to Be Hot

We saw lots of hype earlier this summer, as the corporate media blared headlines about “the hottest day ever recorded” for a few days in July. We’ve seen somewhat less hype—like, zero—over the cooling trends this past couple of weeks.

In fact, the Atlantic Ocean has gotten into the act, with a rapid cooling trend after recording record high water temperatures over the previous year. Scientists expressed shock at the rapid cooling. The Atlantic went from two to five degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal in June, to a degree or two colder than normal now. The likely culprit? The natural end of an El Niño cycle that scientists had not previously predicted.

Germany Shows Us How to Fail in Spectacular Fashion

A peer-reviewed article this month examined whether Germany would have been better off not to embrace green energy. Since 2002, Germany has listened more to its anti-nuke activists, as contrasted with neighboring France, which still relies on nuclear power for almost 70 percent of its electricity. The results in Germany are crystal clear.

As we’ll see in our Good News segment later, we have no need to fear nuclear power. Any resistance is a remnant of fear-mongering by 1970s radicals.

Another Peer-Reviewed Paper Shows the Sun Causes Temperature Fluctuations—Not CO2

A paper published this week, authored by climate scientists, shows that CO2 has minimal effect on driving changes to Earth’s climate—and that changes result far more from the Sun. Albedo, or the amount of cloud cover, has much more of an effect on surface temperatures than CO2 levels in the atmosphere, according to observational and mathematical calculations.

Scientism: Bad Weather Leads to Child Marriages?

This week, the Daily Sceptic site in the UK tore apart a hyperventilating article from state-run AFP in France:

Heavier and longer summer monsoon rains are said to be fuelling a rise in child marriages in Pakistan, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). Human rights workers are warning such weddings are on the rise “due to climate-driven economic insecurity.” Great story since it holds out a small hope that banning hydrocarbon use can help solve a problem of forced and under-aged female abuse that has been endemic in many cultures since time immemorial. It is just a shame about the facts. According to the World Bank climate change knowledge portal, monsoon rains in June, July and August in the period 1991-2020 were marginally less in Pakistan than fell during 1961-1990.

In an error-strewn article reproduced in many publications around the world, the French State-owned agency claimed that flooding in Pakistan in 2022 plunged a third of the country under water. Looking at a contour map would show this is unlikely – impossible even – and the true level of inundation was around 8-10%.

Read the entire article to see how they dismantle the nonsense. It’s quite amusing.

We also have two good news items this week, as electric vehicles continue their inexorable march to irrelevance, and we have new ways to make the nuclear industry more efficient.

Ford Abandons EV SUV program

Yes, the electric vehicle market has continued to implode, and yes, we have another item this week. Ford has decided to cancel its plans for a large, three-row electric SUV. They will reportedly take a $1.9 billion loss on the program. Instead of EVs, Ford looks to reorient towards hybrid versions of the Explorer and Expedition. This in response to consumer demand—despite the insane subsidies from the Biden administration, EVs have failed to catch on with the car-buying public.

US Ready to Start Recycling Nuclear Waste?

In a lengthy report, The Epoch Times made the case that nuclear energy in America could finally break through the decades-long backlog and start building new plants:

Despite growing recognition that nuclear energy may be the most viable solution in America’s quest for reliable low-carbon electricity, the nuclear power industry is struggling to overcome major hurdles; among them, what to do with radioactive, spent fuel.

But new efforts to recycle nuclear waste in the United States, held up for decades by legal and regulatory hurdles, could resolve that issue and more if it is allowed to flourish.

If the United States could follow the lead of France, as we’ve previously reported at Restoration News, we could recycle much of the nuclear waste into reactor fuel, greatly reducing the amount we’d have to safely dispose of.

(Learn more: How the Left’s Global Warming Ideology Wrecked Science—And How to Stop It)

Jeff Reynolds is Co-Editor and Senior Investigative Researcher for Restoration News. A prolific researcher and writer, he authored the book Behind the Curtain in 2019, which details the billionaires and foundations responsible for the radical left's ascension in American politics. You can find his book at www.WhoOwnsTheDems.net.

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