Environmentalists Revel in Creating Unhappiness

There are times when we at Scragged think that those who've gone "all in" on the warmist religion would much rather complain about the problem than solve it.

As evidence, we point to their continued opposition to using nuclear power to fill in the gaps when "renewable" energy sources aren't working.  As conclusive evidence, we point out that the warmists, who were all-in on the legalization of pot just a short time back, have discovered that cultivating pot indoors consumes electricity!  The horror!

Townhall tells us:

Nationally, 80 percent of cannabis is cultivated indoors with sophisticated lighting and environmental controls designed to maximize the plant's yield. It's a setup that can consume up to 2,000 watts of electricity per square meter, 40 times what it takes for leafy greens like lettuce, when grown indoors.

...

One recent model estimated that Massachusetts' nascent cannabis industry represented 10 percent of the state's industrial electricity consumption in 2020. Another study found that growing enough bud for a joint - a gram - consumes as much electricity as driving about 20 miles in a fuel-efficient car. Then there's the still-vibrant illegal market - where there are no emissions rules whatsoever - that consumes fossil fuels at an even higher rate, often using standalone generators or stealing power from neighbors to fuel their operations.  [emphasis added]

Is there any activity at all that these warmist tree huggers will simply leave alone?  Not even air conditioning?

It's true that A/C does require a kilowatt or two.  Demand for air conditioning peaks in California when people get home from work.  This happens as the sun goes down, which reduces the amount of electricity generated by all those acres of solar panels containing exotic materials assembled by slave labor in China.  That's also around the time when California breezes switch from onshore to offshore, so wind isn't doing much for them at that time of day either.

Instead of generating their own non-carbon electricity, California is virtue-signaling by shutting down one of their few nuclear plants early and buying electricity from other states which generate it the old-fashioned way.  This raises electricity demand in those states, which pushes up prices.  Thus, California forces consumers in other states to pay a large part of the costs of California's virtue-signaling futility.

As further evidence, we remind everyone of the fact that Mr. Trump was regarded as a deranged climate barbarian for pulling us out of the Paris agreement whose sole purpose was to let China and India force US taxpayers to pay portions of the cost of cutting their carbon.  Those nations aren't going to do that anytime soon anyway, but they'd have for sure spent every penny of our money they could grab. 

The fact that Mr. Trump's initiatives to encourage American energy independence and replace coal-fired electricity with natural gas cut our emissions more than any other participant in the Paris agreement mattered not at all, he was still a climate criminal.

Most of the climate rhetoric involves forcing people to do things they really don't want to do, such as giving up hamburgers, driving cars, air conditioning, 24-hour electricity availability, and other comforts of civilization.  A great many pundits have noticed that the current covid panic has proven to be a useful legal and societal test case as to just how oppressive supposedly-free governments can get away with being, by scaring their populace into a destructive stampede.

The recent conference on global warming produced enough hot air to raise sea levels at least an inch.  Much of the rhetoric chode the United States for having factories and automobiles with bad breath. Blaming America will continue even though all the way back in 2007, The Guardian published "China passes US as world's biggest CO2 emitter " which admits that we ceased being the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases way back then.  Chinese emissions have increased since then, even as ours have continued to go down.  Yet China gets a free pass as America gets pilloried and billed, and our leaders are leading the parade of pitchforks and torches to destroy everything our fathers worked hard to build.

Some supposedly-green proposals are so ineffective compared to their cost that the Economist published "Collision course" around the same time, claiming that some politicians were beginning to push back.  It's no surprising that a few politicians were beginning to realize that the "earth saving" measures so beloved of the green movement will cost too much. The surprise is that it took them so long, and there were so few, both then and now.

It's disappointing, but not surprising, that there's a simple way to reduce global warming that would work like a charm, people would implement it as rapidly as they could, it's absolutely guaranteed, but nobody mentions it at all.

Here it is:  Most cities and towns in the snow belt have laws requiring that landlords keep apartments considerably warmer than necessary to sustain life or even comfort.  For example, laws enforced in the Town of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, say:

(a) "adequate and suitable heat" means the maintenance of an air temperature of at least twenty degrees Celsius (20°C) in all habitable spaces, by a safe, operable and permanent heating appliance capable of maintaining that temperature;

20 Celsius is 68 degrees Fahrenheit.  Keeping millions of apartments that warm takes millions of gallons of heating oil and generates tons of carbon dioxide, one of the worst greenhouse gases there is according to the warmists who prefer not to think about all the water vapor their precious trees put into the atmosphere.  Many people find 68 degrees a bit cool, some like it fine - but for others, it's too warm.  Why should they be forced by law to be overcooked?

Proposals to cut greenhouse gases by such devices as confiscatory taxes or forcing auto makers to build cars that get more miles per gallon suffer from people not wanting to do what the law requires.  That's why the current proposals cause such fights and will take years to have any effect.

If, however, the law were changed to permit landlords to reduce apartment temperatures to, say 62 degrees, or maybe 60, how long would it take for all the landlords to do the right thing for the planet, turn down their thermostats, and cut carbon footprint?  A week?  An afternoon?

In most places, every degree of lowered temperature cuts fuel costs by around 3%.  Dropping 10 degrees won't cut it 30%, of course, but would cut by at least 20%.  Our EPA tells us that residential uses account for 13% of CO2 emissions!  Wow!  A 20% cut!  What a no-brainer!

If the tenants are uncomfortable, they can express their outrage the same economic way everyone else can - move somewhere else.  A few hundred miles further south perhaps?

How come all the environmentalists keep proposing things people don't want to do instead of suggesting something that people would want to do if only they were allowed?  Is coercing people through government power more important to them then actually saving the planet?

It's a Scam - and They Know It!

If you watch the BBC or read the Guardian, you'll quickly realize that both publications are totally all in on global warming - it's an existential crisis, the world as we know it will end, we've got to cut our energy use back to the pre-industrial age, we have to get to carbon-neutrality in 20 years, and so 4th.

Other articles in the BBC and the Guardian give the lie to their attempts to sow panic to give the government yet more power to meddle in our lives.  The BBC published "Secrets of the sea bed: Hunt for Stone Age site in North Sea" which tells about archaeologists who're looking for remains of prehistoric villages on Dogger Bank.

There's a hint in the title - "Secrets of the sea bed."  Sea beds are below the surface of the ocean, right?  If they're looking for stone age villages under the ocean, one could be forgiven for thinking that they think that the sea level rose in the past and forced humans to move to higher ground. Presumably this has to have been without anyone burning any fossil fuels - even Fred Flintstone had to power his car with his big feet, not fossilized dinosaurs.

And you'd be right, even if pointing this out puts you in the "evil denier" category.  BBC tells us:

Despite the prehistoric finds from the North Sea bed, so far no Mesolithic settlement has been found in that vast area, which flooded after 6,000BC as the Ice Age glaciers retreated.

Eventually the British Isles were cut off from the continent.

Inquiring minds want to know just how deep is Dogger Bank, and just how long ago was it above sea level?

Wikipedia reports:

The water depth ranges from 15 to 36 meters (50 to 120 ft), about 20 meters (65 ft) shallower than the surrounding sea.

The science is settled!  Or is it...

This BBC map is worth at least a third look.  Scientists believe that around 7,000 BC, or 9,000 years ago, Dogger Bank, which is now 120 feet below sea level, was dry land.  Prehistoric SUVs made the sea rise 120 feel in 9,000 years, or one-hundredth of a foot per year.

Mr. Obama's mansion, the site of a recent super-spreader event in spite of its "sophisticated, vaccinated crowd," is about 13 feet above sea level.  The water won't get there for 1,300 years, more than 1,000 times as long as the 12 years AOC has given us before the world ends.

Archaeologists are confident that sea levels were low enough 15-18,000 years ago for people to walk from Siberia to Alaska to populate North America.  So the science of the sea rising slowly ever since 16,000 BC is settled, right?  Well, maybe not.

The Guardian demolished that theory with "Ancient whale skeleton found in Thailand holds clues to climate change."  Unlike the BBC, the Guardian linked their whale of a story to climate change.  To drive that point home, they subtitled their article:

Scientists hope remains, thought to be up to 5,000 years old, will deepen knowledge of whale species and of rising sea levels [emphasis added]

As with anything about the climate, the devil is in the details:

The remains, which were found about 12km (7.5 miles) inland...

Marcus Chua, of the National University of Singapore, said the discovery adds to evidence of "relatively large sea level changes around 6,000 years to 3,000 years ago in the Gulf of Thailand, where the shoreline was up to tens of kilometers inland of the present coast".  [emphasis added]

The BBC map has the sea rising smoothly since 16,000 BC, driving the inhabitants of what had become the island of Dogger Bank to seek other accommodations around 9,000 years ago.  On the other side of the planet, 5 or 6,000 years ago, a whale managed to swim at least 7.5 miles inland from what is now the coast of Thailand.  Instead of deepening knowledge of rising sea levels, the Guardian has presented strong evidence of falling sea levels over the same time range that the BBC claims seas were rising.

If that wasn't enough, a researcher says that the shoreline was "up to tens of kilometers inland of the present coast."  We know that melting glaciers don't always raise the sea level as much as we'd expect because the weight of the water pushes the sea bottom down into the magma which squeezes the land up.  Even accounting for that, it's a bit much to assume that 6,000 years ago, around 4,000 BC, sea levels were simultaneously high enough in the Gulf of Thailand that a whale could swim 7.5 miles inland and Dogger Bank had been under water for only 3,000 years.

The real truth is plain: warmists have no clue what sea levels have done in the past, to say nothing of their oft-falsified predictions of what sea levels will do in the future.  Sound like any other "experts" we've heard from lately?

Bottom Line

Assume for purposes of discussion that the warmists are totally right and that we're headed for disaster even faster than AOC thinks.  Would you trust our government, which couldn't put up a relatively simple web site to sell insurance, enforce the "do not call" list, keep the lead out of New York City housing project plumbing, keep the DC metro running, keep the Chinese out of our government personnel database, keep Boston trains on the tracks, or keep illiterate savages from kicking history's greatest military out of Afghanistan in a weekend, to do anything constructive about climate?

They'll spend the money, sure, but actually fix anything?  You have got to be kidding.  Anybody who believes that is the true fool with their head in the sand, whether at the bottom of the sea or 7.5 miles inland.