Commentary: Ruling Class Disturbance

WEF

The last few months have been interesting. We have started to see some very public disagreements among the world’s ruling classes. The gathering of elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has long fascinated observers and become a lightning rod for criticism, becoming a bogeyman of the right, as well as the hardcore, anticapitalist left. It is a front-row seat to the thinking and priorities of the world’s most powerful people.

In Davos, the world’s media, academic, political, and financial elites spend a few days in luxurious surroundings, praising themselves and forming a consensus on solutions to what they deem to be the problems of the world. This includes everything from facilitating mass migration, tackling global warming by moving away from fossil fuel energy, and the need for economic redistribution to the poor and the third world, all through the corporatist idea of “stakeholder capitalism.”

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Commentary: Making Climate Change a Republican Issue in 2024

Out of sheer perversity, I follow stories in the Washington Post related to weather. It matters not what the weather brings, the cause is global warming (or climate change depending on the temperature of the disaster). Having a flood? Global warming. Got a heavy snow or ice storm? Climate change. They haven’t yet figured out how to blame earthquakes on global warming, but the mainstream media will probably find a cause and effect relationship somehow.

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Commentary: As Toxic as It Is Effective, Governments Wield Fear to Control and Manipulate People

by Kathleen Marquardt   People are excited thinking about being able to live in alternative universes. Unbeknownst to them, they already do – and have been for most of their lives. Especially those born after the era when we wore our Texas Instrument calculators on our belts (our slide rules were…

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Commentary: ‘Reasonable’ Concessions to Climate Hysteria Lack Any Reason at All

First, there is no climate emergency. Claims to the contrary are based on exaggerations of carbon dioxide’s warming effect and computer models that have proven unreliable.

As Republicans settle into the leadership of the new House of Representatives, we are hoping for clearer congressional thinking about the climate issue. However, there is work to do on the Conservative Climate Caucus.

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Commentary: It’s Time to Take Down the Cult of Climate Change for Good

When you look at climate alarmists, there are really only two options: they either don’t know what they’re talking about, or they’re lying.

The “Little Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf’”-like cries of “existential threats” brought on by climate change would be hilarious, if it wasn’t for the disastrous impact from misguided actions to “fix” the problem. However, the fable about a youngster fabricating an emergency time and again isn’t that far off from today’s climate-change evangelists; they both need to recognize their stories are quickly losing credibility.

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Commentary: Hoaxes, Scams, and the Left

Here is the hard-discovered truth.

The Left, which now controls all the centers of power and the commanding heights of the world economy, seeks to codify their ideology as science, and thereby make it irrefutable. You can’t disagree with it or you are a kook or insurrectionist. You are outside what Thomas Kuhn, called the “paradigm of normal science.”

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Republicans Introduce Bill to Defund John Kerry, Other Biden ‘Climate Tyrants’

Eight Republican House members have introduced legislation to defund climate czar John Kerry and other “climate tyrants“ inside the Biden administration, blaming them for an energy crisis that has sent gasoline soaring to $5 a gallon.

The group, led by Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, introduced the No Taxpayer Funding for CZARS Act that would ban federal funding for any activity of the special presidential envoy for climate, including salary and both administrative and travel expenses.

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Commentary: The Political Necessity of Trump’s Challenge of Climate Hysteria

Sin, punishment, redemption: as an ideology, environmentalism shares many features with organized religion. Falling after Easter this year, Earth Day, which was celebrated April 22, focuses on the sin-and-punishment parts of the trilogy. Redemption comes later, toward the end of each year, at the annual U.N. climate conferences that will save the planet.

On Earth Day this year, however, a loud dissenting voice was heard. Speaking at a Heritage Foundation event in Florida, Donald Trump attacked climate-change catastrophizing.

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Industry Groups Raise Questions After Study on Gas Stoves

Industry groups and others are pushing back after a study found gas stoves contribute more to global warming than previously thought at a time when some elected officials are considering policies to limit natural gas connections.

The study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, found methane that leaks from natural gas stoves in U.S. homes has a climate impact equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions from about 500,000 gas-powered cars.

The study also tested emissions from stoves in homes. A Stanford news release that accompanied the study raised concerns about indoor air quality because of the levels of nitrogen oxides.

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Commentary: Be Grateful for Global Warming

"It's not easy being green" sign in the middle of a crowd

Present-day warming has been termed a crisis, and modern economic development a cancer. But what if I told you that much of the recent advancement in human prosperity would have been impossible without the temperature increases of the last several hundred years?

A key to the sustenance of any society is food security. Today’s world should be grateful for today’s relative warmth as well as higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels because both have been instrumental in propelling plant growth globally.

A review of human and climate history reveals a strong link between the rise and fall of temperature and the rise and fall of civilization—just opposite of what the climate doomsayers are telling you.

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Governors Using Federal Coronavirus Relief Funds on ‘Global Warming’ Initiatives Instead

Several governors around the country are taking federal funds meant to combat the coronavirus and instead using the money to deal with so-called “global warming.”

Breitbart reports that, in addition to federal stimulus funds, such governors are taking advantage of budget surpluses as a result of tax collection and massive consumer spending following the end of most lockdowns. Among the most prominent governors engaging in such misuse of funds are Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.), and Jay Inslee (D-Wash.).

“The climate crisis is not an abstraction,” Inslee falsely claimed. “It is something that I and every governor in the United States, almost on a weekly basis, have to deal with.” Newsom, who has incorrectly described global warming as an “existential threat,” has proposed spending of up to $24 billion over the next five years, for such projects as electric school buses, more electric vehicle charging stations, and additional “clean energy” development and storage projects.

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Commentary: Six Cultish Things Globalist Elites Want You to Look Forward to in 2022—and Beyond

The year is 2022. The place: a New York City so overpopulated that everyone is sleeping and dying on outdoor stairways. All sweating like pigs because of global warming. People have become unwitting cannibals because there is no more food. Elites still dine on delectables, but all that remains for the hoi polloi is the promise of a green wafer allegedly made of plankton, but in reality “It’s PEOPLE!!”

That’s the setting of the over-the-top 1973 movie “Soylent Green,” produced in the wake of Paul Ehrlich’s classic fear porn book The Population Bomb. Time has proven Ehrlich’s predictions of mass starvation due to population growth to be massively wrong. Ehrlich also lost his famous wager with the economist Julian Simon who predicted a more prosperous world. Still, Malthusian propaganda dies hard because it’s such an effective tool for social engineering.

“Soylent Green” is a random example, chosen because its year 2022 happens to be upon us. Certainly, dates and science used in science fiction have a heavy emphasis on fiction. The “Blade Runner” rebellion of genetically designed replicants was set in 2019. And, of course, Big Brother ruled in George Orwell’s 1984. Though much has come to pass, including genetic engineering and the surveillance state, there’s proof enough that we can’t predict the future with certainty.

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Dr. Christopher Weiss, Professor of Atmospheric Science at Texas Tech, Talks Tornados in Out of Season December

Dr. Christopher Weiss of Texas Tech

Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas Tech, Christopher Weiss to the newsmakers line to talk about last Friday’s out of season tornados that ravaged Kentucky and parts of Middle Tennessee.

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Commentary: Three Environmental Doomsday Myths, Debunked

For many, thinking about the future of our planet is terrifying. According to a global survey reported by the BBC, 56 percent of young people believe that humanity is doomed because of climate change and 45 percent say that their anxiety about the climate affects their daily lives. Here in the US, the story is much the same; three-quarters of Americans believe that climate change will result in the extinction of man, and one in five millennials believe that that extinction will occur within their lifetime.

A college student recently wrote the following in a campus newspaper about her climate anxiety:

I stay up into the early hours of the morning, Googling some variation of “Is there hope for climate change,” and “Biden climate change plan good?” (…) I fret over every piece of waste I encounter, wondering whether I should trash it or wash it and hope it qualifies for the recycling bin. What if I wash the aluminum foil I heated leftover lasagna on, does it become recyclable then? The anxiety is crippling.

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Democrats Laden $3.5 Trillion Budget Bill with ‘Green New Deal’ Handouts

Field of sunflowers with several wind turbines in the distance

Democrats have inserted numerous provisions and subsidy programs into their $3.5 trillion budget that would benefit green energy companies and speed the transition to renewables.

The Build Back Better Act would invest an estimated $295 billion of taxpayer money into a variety of clean energy programs in what would amount to the most sweeping climate effort passed by Congress, according to a House Committee on Energy and Commerce report. That price tag doesn’t factor in the other costly measures approved by the House Ways and Means, Agriculture, Natural Resources, Oversight and Transportation committees last month.

“This bill is crammed with green welfare subsidies, specifically for corporations and the wealthy,” House Ways and Means Ranking Member Kevin Brady told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.

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Commentary: A Green Conundrum for the Golden State

From left: U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Smokey Bear pose during an event honoring Gov. Schwarzenegger as an honorary Forest Ranger at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. Wed., Oct. 29, 2013. Gov. Schwarzenegger is being honored for his signing and implementing the landmark California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 and continued leadership on climate change since leaving office. USDA photo by Bob Nichols

In 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the landmark AB 32, the “Global Warming Solutions Act.” Determined to leave a legacy that would ensure he remained welcome among the glitterati of Hollywood and Manhattan, Schwarzenegger may not have fully comprehended the forces he unleashed.

Under AB 32, California was required to “reduce its [greenhouse gas] emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.” Now, according to the “scoping plan” updated in 2017, California must “further reduce its GHG emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.”

The problem with such an ambitious plan is that achieving it will preclude ordinary Californians ever enjoying the lifestyle that people living in developed nations have earned and have come to expect. It will condemn Californians to chronic scarcity of energy, with repercussions that remain poorly understood by voters.

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Commentary: Climate Change Activists Misrepresent Extreme Weather Events

The Pacific Northwest was hit with a record-shattering heat wave in June, with temperatures over 35 degrees higher than normal in some places. On June 28, Portland, Ore., reached 116 degrees. Late last week the region suffered another blast of hot weather, with a high in Portland of 103 degrees. The New York Times didn’t hesitate to pronounce the region’s bouts of extreme weather proof that the climate wasn’t just changing, but catastrophically so.

To make that claim, the Times relied on a “consortium of climate experts” that calls itself World Weather Attribution, a group organized not just to attribute extreme weather events to climate change, but to do so quickly. Within days of the June heat wave, the researchers released an analysis, declaring that the torrid spell “was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.”

World Weather Attribution and its alarming report were trumpeted by Time magazine, touted by the NOAA website  Climate.gov , and featured by CBS News, CNBC, Scientific American, CNN, the Washington Post, USAToday, and the New York Times, among others.

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Retired General Picked by Nancy Pelosi to Review Capitol Security Appears on Chinese Propaganda Network

Russel Honore

Chinese government officials and state-controlled media agencies have recently ramped up their rhetoric against the United States on the issue of climate change, portraying the U.S. as not doing enough to limit greenhouse emissions even though China is by far the world’s biggest polluter.

One shot fired in the propaganda war came this week in the form of an interview that CGTN America, the U.S. affiliate of the Beijing-controlled China Central Television (CCTV), conducted with retired Army Lt. General Russel Honoré.

Honoré, who is founder of the environmental group Green Army, decried in the CGTN interview that a “large part” of the population in his native Louisiana denies the existence of climate change.

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Commentary: Biden’s Fake Climate Apocalypse Has Real Consequences

With the wave of executive orders and legislation coming from the Biden administration, and the cultural antics of his woke supporters, Biden’s war on fossil fuels has received insufficient attention. Yet energy is the lifeblood of our economy, and making traditional energy sources vastly more expensive is the single most destructive aspect of Biden’s policies. If this country does not successfully mobilize against these policies, the vast majority will experience a dramatic drop in their standard of living.

Supposedly the assault on fossil fuels — via regulation; cancellation of pipelines; concocting a huge, wholly imaginary “social cost of carbon”; taxes; and solar and wind mandates — is necessary to save the planet from imminent catastrophe produced by man-made global warming.

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Biden Pick for Interior Secretary Likely to Face Rocky Confirmation Hearing

U.S. Senate Republicans may use next week’s Interior confirmation hearing for Rep. Debra Haaland to air their grievances about the Biden administration’s energy policies, running the risk of alienating Native Americans in Western states.

GOP Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming and Steve Daines of Montana sit on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which will hold the Tuesday hearing, and both have already raised objections that Haaland holds “radical” views. Daines vowed to block her progress in the Senate unless she addresses several issues that concern him.

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Falling CO2 Emissions Expose ‘Global Warming’ Alarmism As Anti-Science

The “experts” that dominate government, big business, universities, and international institutions vitriolically insist that “science” purportedly establishes beyond doubt that carbon dioxide emissions are raising global temperatures and that the warmer earth will be catastrophic.

In 2020, the pandemic-induced shutdowns that inflicted so much economic harm, particularly on the Third World’s already poor, reduced CO2 emissions by a record-breaking 7 percent. Those demanding that Americans reduce emissions must be especially pleased: the U.S. led the world with a 12 percent reduction.

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Commentary: Three Inconvenient Truths 60 Minutes Forgot to Mention in Its Story on California Wildfires and Climate Change

CBS journalist Scott Pelley recently visited Butte County, California, to report on the wildfires devastating the Golden State.

Government statistics show that more than 8,300 wildfires have burned some 4 million acres to date. The flames have claimed 31 lives and destroyed nearly 8,700 structures. One of those structures belonged to Fire Station 61 Chief Reed Rankin, who saw his home reduced to a charred skeleton after a September blaze.

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Commentary: No, Antarctica Is Not ‘Rapidly Melting’

The BBC, which in September 2018 announced its decision to censor any reports by climate skeptics, continues to propagandize for climate alarmists. On March 12, BBC “Science Correspondent” Jonathan Amos published an alarming article entitled “Greenland and Antarctica ice loss accelerating.” According to Amos, “Earth’s great ice sheets, Greenland and Antarctica, are now losing mass six times faster than they were in the 1990s thanks to warming conditions.”

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Climate Activists Want Michael Moore’s Doc Panning Green Energy Banned, Say It’s Chock Full of ‘Misinformation’

Anti-fossil fuel activists unsuccessfully attempted to browbeat the film producer behind a new Michael Moore documentary panning green energy into permanently removing the movie over claims that it contains pro-oil industry misinformation.

Activist Josh Fox, climate scientist Michael Mann, and other environmentalists signed onto a petition Friday asking the  producer to take down Planet of Humans, claiming Moore’s film relies on old data to claim solar and wind energy is dependent on fossil fuels. Films for Action initially nixed the film before putting it back online, saying the move was meant to engage in debate.

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Minneapolis City Council: Failure to Act on Climate Change ‘Antithetical’ to the Declaration of Independence

A Minneapolis City Council committee passed a resolution Monday to declare that “there is a climate emergency which demands a massive-scale mobilization to halt, reverse, and address its consequences.”

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Commentary: The Politics, Science, and Politicized Science of Climate Change

One has to wonder if the shock and despair described in David Bowie’s 1971 hit, “Five Years,” would be the preferred collective mentality for humanity, at least if the relentless propaganda campaigns of climate change activists are successful. And one must admit they have powerful allies at their disposal. A climate alarm consensus informs America’s entire educational, entertainment, and media establishments, along with most corporate marketing, and most political platforms from the local city council to the United Nations.

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Dean Phillips Cosponsors ‘100 Percent Clean Economy Act,’ Says ‘Humankind’s Ability to Thrive’ in Question

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN-03) touted his status as an “original cosponsor” of a bill that would force America on the path to a 100 percent clean energy economy by 2050.

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Analysis: Climate Change Fears of Teen Activist Are Empirically Baseless

At a recent United Nations summit, 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg claimed that the Earth is on the brink of destruction and that older generations are betraying younger ones by not doing enough to stop climate change. The media has amplified these allegations by giving her speech broad, glowing coverage, but the fears she expressed are not grounded in reality.

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Commentary: How Conservatives Can Protect the Environment and Win Voters, Too

Conservatives need to do a better job on the environment. That seems like a controversial thing to say, because usually when you hear a conservative speak positively about an issue closely identified with liberalism, it is the precursor to a sellout of conservative principles. How many times have you read an essay claiming to make “the conservative case” for some profoundly anti-conservative project like voting for Hillary Clinton or government-run healthcare?

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Climate Experts Admit to Republican Congressman That Humans Aren’t Responsible for Past 20,000 Years of Global Warming

  During a Thursday hearing before the U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL-05) got a panel of climate science experts to admit that “humans are not responsible for the Earth’s global warming that has occurred over the past 20,000 years.” All four of the experts…

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Commentary: Magical Thinking Meets the Inconvenient Realities of the ‘New Energy Economy’

by Mark P. Mills   A week doesn’t pass without a mayor, governor, policymaker or pundit joining the rush to demand, or predict, an energy future that is entirely based on wind/solar and batteries, freed from the “burden” of the hydrocarbons that have fueled societies for centuries. Regardless of one’s…

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National Park Quietly Removed Warning That Glaciers ‘Will All Be Gone’ by 2020 After Years of Heavy Snowfall

by Michael Bastasch   The National Park Service (NPS) quietly removed a visitor center sign saying the glaciers at Glacier National Park would disappear by 2020 due to climate change. As it turns out, higher-than-average snowfall in recent years upended computer model projections from the early 2000s that NPS based…

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Minneapolis Official Calls for End to Car Ownership

  Sam Rockwell, president of the Minneapolis Planning Commission, suggested in a recent op-ed for The Star Tribune that in order “to save the planet, we have to get over cars.” “The way we live our lives is how we got into this climate catastrophe in the first place. Of…

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Environmentalists Say Imprisoned Felons Should Be Able to Vote Because of Global Warming

by Michael Bastasch   Environmentalists joined the far-left campaign to give voting rights to incarcerated felons, arguing felon voting is crucial to fighting global warming. “Until each and every one of them have their voting rights restored, the movement for climate justice — and every progressive cause — will be…

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Minneapolis Wants to Ban New Drive-Thru Windows to Reduce Carbon Emissions

  Minneapolis wants to ban all new drive-thru windows citywide in order to cut down on carbon emissions produced by idling cars. The City Planning Commission has been considering a drive-thru ban since 2017, but the idea didn’t really start to come to fruition until the 2018 conversations surrounding the…

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UN Warns of Imminent Ecological Catastrophe, Just Like They Did in 1982

by Michael Bastach   The United Nations is out with another alarming report, claiming that one million species, more than ever before, are threatened with imminent extinction if drastic actions aren’t taken. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s similar warning to one given by the head of the United Nations Environment…

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House Democrats Introduce ‘Minnesota Green New Deal’ Written By High School Students

Minnesota lawmakers have officially introduced a state level “Green New Deal” that was inspired in large part by youth-activist organizations. In fact, when introducing his bill Wednesday, Rep. Frank Hornstein (DFL-Minneapolis) said it was the “first time” he’s ever “witnessed high school students actually writing a bill.” Hornstein was joined…

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REPORT: 50 Percent Renewable Energy Mandate Would Cost Minnesota $80 Billion by 2050

A shocking new report from the Center of the American Experiment found that a 50 percent renewable energy mandate would cost $80.2 billion in Minnesota alone by the year 2050. Minnesota’s current renewable energy mandate, or REM, requires that 25 percent of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by…

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Commentary: Here Are Five Hysterical Environmentalist Claims in Modern History

by Jarret Stepman   Peddlers of the Green New Deal know that the only way for their radical agenda to become reality is if Americans buy into the wildest claims of climate extremists. It’s clear that some of the most enthusiastic supporters of this radical agenda are young people. This…

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Commentary: Where Did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Get Her Sweet Potatoes?

by Jeffrey A. Tucker   Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was trying to explain to me that the world is going to melt, we are all doing to die, and probably we shouldn’t be having any more children, but I was distracted by the dinner she was preparing on camera. She was carefully…

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Commentary: Mass Immigration and Climate Change Doublethink

by Quentin Borges-Silva   Doublethink, as articulated by George Orwell in 1984, “means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” Unfortunately, the modern left takes Orwell’s book not as the warning it was intended to be, but as an instruction manual. Perhaps nowhere…

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Evidence Mounts Against Climate Prediction That Inspired ‘Day After Tomorrow’ Disaster Flick

by Michael Bastasch   New evidence casts further doubt on model-based predictions that global warming could halt the Gulf Stream currents as part of an alarming scenario that inspired the 2004 disaster film, “The Day After Tomorrow.” For years, scientists warned global warming could halt the Atlantic’s “conveyor belt” and…

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FAKE NEWS: Headline-Grabbing Ocean Warming Study is Full of ‘Factual Errors and Misleading Statements,’ Scientist Says

by Michael Bastach   Another major headline-grabbing climate study suggesting oceans have warmed faster than previously thought is full of “factual errors and misleading statements,” according to independent scientist Nic Lewis. Lewis challenged the climate paper’s central arguments that more recent estimates of ocean heat content (OHC) are higher than…

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Minnesota Dept of Education Rewriting Academic Standards to Address Climate Change

Minnesota’s Department of Education is currently in the process of rewriting its K-12 academic standards in science to give teachers greater autonomy over discussing climate change in the classroom. The Department of Education announced the formation of a Science Standards Committee in March 2018, and held its first full committee…

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The Climate Paper Most Widely Covered by the Media in 2018 was Actually a Call for Global Socialism

by Michael Bastasch   The most popular climate paper of 2018 called for “collective human action” to keep global warming from turning Earth into a “hothouse,” according to media tracking data. The so-called “Hothouse Earth” paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in August, sparked a…

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EPA Climate Model Shows ‘Green New Deal’ Would Avert a ‘Barely Detectable’ Amount of Global Warming

by Michael Bastasch   Democrats are increasingly lining up behind New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s call for a “Green New Deal,” but few, if any, have talked about its actual impact on global warming. Even if all the Green New Deal’s goals were achieved, it would have a negligible, and…

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