Tag: climategate

NY’s ‘green elephant’ climate projects are collapsing under the weight of . . . math

Nearly two dozen New York clean energy projects are likely to get scrapped because the financial math doesn’t add up — though the state powers that be don’t want to admit that it never did.

Officially, the New York State Energy Research Development Authority, aka NYSERDA, is simply refusing to renegotiate state contracts to build various wind and solar plants, likely leading its counterparties to pull out.

These companies want more cash because the projects’ costs have soared since the deals were inked — mainly because NYSERDA winked at unlikely early estimates with an expectation that it would OK more realistic numbers later on.

In at least one earlier round, it simply rebid the contracts to reflect true costs, but that game is up now that those costs are becoming undeniable, and consumers are already screaming at the electric rate hikes needed to cover the bills.

It’s all part of the con that is New York’s 2019 Climate Act, a scam that set insane goals for decarbonizing the state’s electricity grid and outlined imaginary steps to paint the transition as practical. 

Green ideologues always figure deception is the best way to get governments started on such “reforms,” hoping they can then hector the politicians into keeping the scam going by concealing how exorbitant the costs really are.

Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo jumped on board as he eyed a presidential run; his successor, Kathy Hochul, declined to call out the lunacy until now, when she’s running for re-election as the economic pain starts to hit.

Keep reading

Massachusetts Dems Advance Bill To Limit How Far You Can Drive In Your Own Car

Massachusetts lawmakers are barreling ahead with a bill that would force the state to slash the total miles residents drive, all under the banner of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The proposal, Senate Bill S.2246, doesn’t slap a hard cap on your daily commute… yet – but it orders the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) to set binding goals for reducing statewide vehicle miles traveled (VMT). It also creates a new government council tasked with pushing people onto public transit whether they like it or not.

A local Boston report highlights the move:

“The bill proposed in Massachusetts would limit how far you can drive in your own car. So lawmakers say it would help reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. Now, while no specific mileage limit was listed, the bill would require MassDOT to set goals to reduce the number of statewide driving miles. It would also establish a new council to find ways to make public transportation more accessible for residents. Now, critics say A cap on personal vehicle miles would directly impact those in rural parts of the state.”

The committee gave it a favorable 4-1 vote and shipped it to the Senate Ways and Means Committee, keeping the radical plan alive on Beacon Hill.

This isn’t some fringe idea cooked up in isolation. It’s part of a broader push to ration mobility under the twin excuses of “climate” and “equity.” Similar thinking powers the 15-minute city concept – the urban planning fad sold as “convenience” but designed to make driving anywhere outside your little neighborhood a bureaucratic nightmare.

Need to visit family across town or haul supplies for a business? Too bad. The goal is fewer cars, fewer miles, and more dependence on government-run transit that’s already unreliable and crime-ridden in blue cities.

Keep reading

Climate Organization Behind Anti-ICE Protests Is Leading May 1 School Walkout Plan, Parent Group Reports

One of the main organizations behind the recent protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations is encouraging children to walk out of class en masse next month to help promote its agenda, which includes achieving what it said are “Eco-socialism, [a] multi-racial democracy, and Green New Deal legislation,” according to a April 8 report by representatives of parent group Defending Education.

The Sunrise Movement, during its March 17 online membership meeting, called on schools to “train up” employees and students to disrupt the federal government ahead of planned May 1 “May Day” protests as part of an ongoing “political revolution” to “structurally change the foundations of this country,” according to slides Defending Education, a nonprofit opposing indoctrination in classrooms, obtained from a tipster who attended the meeting.

The Sunrise Movement, according to the slides and its website, describes itself as an anti-President Donald Trump “climate revolution” group that advocates socialism, supports a rainbow coalition of the multi-racial working class, and calls for an end to the “billionaire” two-party political system.

In addition to mass school walkouts, the organization is also calling for more disruptions to Hilton hotels, which have housed ICE officers, according to the slides. Past actions included calling for boycotts of the hotel chain and engaging in “wide awake” events where protestors gathered outside of Hilton-branded hotels and made as much noise as possible to prevent ICE officers—and everyone else staying there—from sleeping.

Another slide illustrates a domino effect that starts with the ideological conversion of students and young people and spreads to teachers, customer service workers, city service workers, factory service workers, shipping and transportation workers, and ultimately “military and police defections.”

“They have zero reservations about using children to advance their political ideology,” Rhyen Staley, Defending Education research director, told The Epoch Times. “These kids are being used for their propaganda.”

Keep reading

The EU’s Failed Green Deal Is a Warning to Us All

Ambition cannot replace realism.

In 2020, the European Union launched its Green Deal. Six years later, investments in hydrogen-based projects have collapsed, and electricity prices are twice as high as in the US and China. Europe is losing its competitive edge. In our research for the Institute of Economic Affairs, we identify eight reasons why the EU Green Deal is not working. In doing so, we draw policy lessons for the United Kingdom.

In December 2019, the European Commission presented the Green Deal as a historic project. Europe would become the world’s first climate-neutral continent while strengthening its industrial base. Six years later, the picture is considerably bleaker. Electricity prices for industrial customers are about twice as high as in the US and China, several large-scale hydrogen projects have been postponed or cancelled, and the EU’s global competitiveness continues to weaken.

This development is not surprising. The green deal marks a clear break with traditional environmental policy, which has historically been based on emissions pricing, technology neutrality and incremental improvements. Instead, the EU has embraced a mission-oriented industrial policy in which the policy identifies winning technologies, sets detailed sectoral targets and channels large resources to selected projects and companies.

In a new collective volume—“The Green Entrepreneurial State? Exploring the Pitfalls of Green Deals”—we, together with 17 other researchers, analyse the green agenda from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. The conclusion is clear: green industrial policy suffers from structural problems; therefore, it rarely works as intended in practice.

First, the policy attempts to solve complex, systemic challenges with tools that require overview, control and predictability. But climate and energy systems are characterised by uncertainty, rapid technological development and global dependencies that cannot be controlled from above through roadmaps drawn by politicians. Germany’s Energiewende is a cautionary example: A politically motivated nuclear phase-out has contributed to high electricity prices, continued fossil fuel dependence and weakened industrial competitiveness.

Second, the green agenda ignores the fact that politicians and authorities are not neutral social planners but are influenced by self-interest, emotional narratives and special interests. The result is rent seeking, clientelism and support for projects that are politically attractive rather than socio-economically valuable. Europe’s investments in hydrogen, steel and battery production are stark illustrations of this problem.

Third, competition is distorted. When certain technologies—such as hydrogen, wind power or specific industrial projects—receive extensive support, the market’s decentralised selection process is undermined. Technologies that are not socio-economically viable are kept alive, while alternative solutions are squeezed out. This is exacerbated by the fact that system costs, grid expansion and storage requirements are often ignored in decisions.

Fourth, government risk-sharing increases moral hazard. When taxpayers bear a large part of the downside, the incentives to take excessive risks become stronger. Experience from several green mega-projects shows that technological optimism is often combined with a lack of cost control.

Finally, behavioural economic mechanisms play a central role. Climate policy has typically been couched in alarmist terms where threats are exaggerated and opportunity costs downplayed. In such a “loss framing,” even very risky and expensive projects become politically rational, despite the uncertainty of their benefits.

Keep reading

Shock New Evidence Showing No Link Between CO2 and Temperature Over Last Three Million Years Stumps Net Zero Activists

The climate science world (‘settled’ division) is in shock following the discovery in ancient ice cores that levels of carbon dioxide remained stable as the world plunged into an ice age around 2.7 million years ago. Levels of CO2 at around 250 parts per million (ppm) were said to be lower than often assumed with just a 20 ppm movement recorded for the following near three million-year period. In addition, no changes in methane levels were seen in the entire period. Massive decreases in temperature with occasional interglacial rises appear to have occurred without troubling ‘greenhouse’ gas levels, and this revelation has caused near panic in activist circles.

The assumed level three million years ago of CO2 was around 400 ppm, a convenient mark that has been used to explain the subsequent ice age and a drop to 250 ppm. Due to the recently published paper, this explanation has become more problematic and natural climate variation is correctly noted to have occurred with the temperature changes. Alas, similar explanations are mostly ignored in discussing today’s climate changes in the interests of promoting the Net Zero fantasy. Some cling desperately to a dominant CO2 role, including one of the authors of the findings published in Nature. The co-author states that the results suggest even greater climate sensitivity to the warming effect of CO2. In short, there is a great deal of applying the laws of physics and chemistry to one era, but failing to extend the same courtesy to another.

The title of the paper, produced by 17 America-based scientists, was enough to set alarm bells ringing in the ‘settled’ science, Net Zero-obsessed community: ‘Broadly stable atmospheric CO2 and CH4 levels over the past three million years.’ A related paper examining ocean heat content derived from the ice core record was also published. Carrie Lear, Professor of Past Climates and Earth System Changes at Cardiff University, claimed that the papers “don’t rewrite the role of CO2, they underline how sensitive the climate system is… that is why today’s rapid  CO2 rise is so alarming”.

Ah, yes. Even if CO2 movements are minimal, probably within a margin of potential error, they are still responsible for large variations in temperature. The laws of climate science are ‘settled’ – if the trace atmospheric gas CO2 is rising, falling or generally stable, it is almost wholly responsible for large movements in global temperature. Under this rather shaky assumption, humans must stop burning hydrocarbons and return to a neo-Malthusian pre-industrial age.

Study lead author Julia Marks-Peterson noted: “We definitely were a bit surprised. If correct, the findings may suggest that even small changes in greenhouse gas levels could trigger major shifts in climate.” That’s a little bit of a scary thought, she added, possibly with an eye on future grant funding. “May suggest” is doing a lot of the work here, and it may also be suggested that more plausible opinions are available.

Quoted in New Scientist magazine, Tim Naish, Professor of Earth Science at Victoria University in New Zealand, said it was “way too early to thrown the baby out with the bathwater”. Perish the thought that baby should be given its marching orders, ending a science-lite 40-year demonisation of CO2 and related promotion of a hard-Left Net Zero dream.

Keep reading

“Renewable” energy policies can’t work – because of physics

Chapter 1: The Physics That Demolishes Energy Policy, Or Why You Can’t Boil An Egg In A Swimming Pool

By Richard Lyon, 3 March 2026

On Saturday, I told you I’d written a book and promised to walk through its core arguments chapter by chapter. Some long-standing readers will recognise what follows from a post I wrote in 2024. This is the sharper, tighter version that became the book’s opening chapter – the foundation everything else rests on. If you’re new here, start here.

There is far more heat energy in a swimming pool than in a pan of boiling water. You can boil an egg in the pan. You can’t boil an egg in the pool. And if you doubled the size of the pool, you’d double the energy available – and still have a cold, raw egg.

This is not a riddle. It is the single most important concept in the energy debate, and almost nobody making energy policy understands it.

Gradient

To do useful work, energy must flow from a region of high concentration to a region of low concentration. This difference is called the energy gradient. The steeper the gradient, the more work you can extract. A shallow gradient means the energy is real but useless.

Think of a ski slope. A run that falls 1,000 feet over 1,000 feet of distance is steep enough to let gravity do the work. A ski queue that falls 10 feet over 100 feet is too shallow – you have to shuffle. Now join 100 ski queues end to end. The total height difference is 1,000 feet – the same as the ski run. But do you glide down it? No. Because the gradient hasn’t changed. It’s still a long, flat shuffle.

This is exactly what happens when you build more wind turbines. A gas flame at 1,500°C in a 15°C room is a ski run – a vast temperature difference that a power generation system can exploit. A wind turbine extracts energy from air moving at perhaps 25 miles an hour. That’s real energy, but it’s a tiny gradient – the difference between a breeze and no breeze. Build a thousand turbines and the total energy grows, but the gradient of each one hasn’t changed. You haven’t built a ski run. You’ve built a thousand ski queues.

Density

Energy gradient tells you whether a source can do work, and therefore why the sheer quantity of energy available tells you almost nothing about how much useful work you can extract from it. Energy density tells you whether you can build a civilisation on it.

Diesel contains roughly 44 megajoules per kilogram. The best lithium-ion battery manages about 1. That is a ratio of 44 to 1 – and the gap is not an engineering problem. It is a chemistry problem. Carbon-hydrogen bonds release enormous energy when broken. Shuttling lithium ions between electrodes releases much less. The periodic table is not subject to software updates.

This is why you can drive from London to Edinburgh on 50 litres of diesel, but need a battery weighing half a tonne to do it in an electric car. It’s why aviation runs on kerosene and always will. It is not a matter of waiting for better technology. It is a hard physical constraint.

Every successful energy transition in history has moved up the density ladder: wood to coal, coal to oil, oil to nuclear. Each step concentrated more energy into less mass, enabling capabilities that were physically impossible before. Railways. Aviation. The globalised supply chain. The direction has always been the same: concentration.

Keep reading

Kathy Hochul: Oops, That Climate Law Was a Mistake…

Kathy Hochul is up for reelection this year, and has a big, big problem: for all the talk about an “affordability” agenda, every single policy the Democrats like to push increases costs, reduces quality of life, and drives people out of Blue states. 

And one of the worst problems she faces is skyrocketing energy bills, and the prospect that those prices will rise even more and faster in the next few years as climate deadlines rapidly approach. 

The pressure is so great, both because consumers are pissed off and businesses that can move begin doing so, that Hochul wants to “delay” the climate goals she and the Democrats were so excited about just a few years ago. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday moved to alter and delay the implementation of New York State’s landmark 2019 climate law, which calls for gradually decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by certain deadlines.

Those proposed adjustments include delaying issuing the regulations for enforcing the law — already two years late — until 2030 and amending how certain emissions are measured.

“We need more time,” Ms. Hochul wrote in an editorial that was published on Friday morning in The Empire Report, a news site that covers state politics. “So much has radically changed since the Climate Act was enacted, necessitating common-sense adjustments.”

The proposal, anticipated by lawmakers in Albany, comes late in the budget negotiation process. Although Ms. Hochul has considerable leverage to push for her agenda during this time, members of the Legislature will need to approve the final budget, which would include changes to the climate law.

So much has changed since 2019? Not really. Every sane person then knew that these goals were unattainable, but the pursuit of them would inevitably mean skyrocketing energy costs. 

Keep reading

Another Connecticut Climate Plan — Another Charge On Your Bill 

Connecticut lawmakers have a habit of raising taxes by calling them something else. 

The latest example is S.B. 453, a proposal that would impose a five-percent surcharge on certain insurance policies tied to fossil-fuel infrastructure in the state. 

The revenue would flow into a new “climate resilience account.” According to the bill, the fund would support projects such as flood-risk data collection, public awareness efforts in high-risk communities, and grants for infrastructure designed to mitigate flooding. 

On paper, the plan sounds straightforward: apply a surcharge to fossil-fuel infrastructure and use the proceeds for climate-related programs. 

In practice, costs introduced into complex systems rarely stay where they start. 

They move. 

How the Surcharge Works 

The bill applies to insurance policies covering infrastructure involved in the processing, export, or transportation of oil, natural gas, or coal. It specifically references pipelines, refineries, terminals, and utility-scale generation facilities. 

That last category is significant. 

New England continues to rely heavily on natural-gas for electricity generation. When the cost of operating those facilities rises — whether from fuel, regulations, or insurance — those increases do not simply vanish. They are incorporated into wholesale electricity markets, which influence the supply rates paid by customers of utilities like Eversource and United Illuminating. 

A surcharge introduced upstream can work its way, step by step, into ratepayer bills. 

It is also important to note that the surcharge is not imposed directly on fossil-fuel companies themselves. It is added to the insurance policies that cover them. Insurers collect the surcharge and remit it to the state, but the insured entities ultimately bear the cost — and costs in the energy sector tend to ripple outward. 

Keep reading

Scientists DUMP 65,000 Litres Of CHEMICALS Into Ocean In Geoengineering Experiment

In a move that’s raising alarm, researchers have poured 65,000 litres of sodium hydroxide into the Gulf of Maine, claiming it’s a step toward combating climate change through geoengineering. 

With unknown effects on marine life, many are worried this experiment reeks of tinkering that could backfire.

The trial, dubbed the LOC-NESS project, took place off the Massachusetts coast last August, with scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution leading the charge. 

They argue that boosting ocean alkalinity could suck more CO2 from the atmosphere, turning it into harmless baking soda. 

Yet, as globalist agendas push these unproven fixes, freedom-loving skeptics see it as another layer of control over nature without public consent.

Over four days, the team added the alkaline chemical, tagged with red dye for tracking, to waters 50 miles off Boston. “These early results demonstrate that small-scale OAE deployments can be engineered, tracked, and monitored with high precision,” said principal investigator Adam Subhas of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. “We need independent, transparent research to determine which solutions might work.”

The method, known as Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE), aims to mimic and accelerate the ocean’s natural CO2 absorption. 

Keep reading

California’s green policies destroy blue-collar jobs

Gavin Newsom complains of “faux outrage” over his comments to a largely black audience in Atlanta about his SAT scores, in which he implied a shared lack of ability.

No state makes more of its “enlightened” stance on racial justice than California. But few states do worse.

Governor Newsom and his Sacramento claque have embraced reparations for the descendants of slaves. They are also working overtime to preserve affirmative action policies, despite the electorate’s widespread rejection.

But Newsom’s racial rhetoric is, as the leftist site Jacobin suggests, nothing more than “pure rhetorical posturing.”

For example, the reparations promise new free tuition and housing subsidies to anyone who can prove they are descendants of slaves — but there’s little to no money behind this feint.

California’s adoption of such “reparations,” recently also embraced in San Francisco, also seems a bit absurd, given that it was never a slave state.

California, like every state, is burdened by a racist past, but much of this was aimed at what were larger populations — first Native Americans, then old Californios (descendants of Mexican/Spanish settlers) and, most of all, Asians, who were banned from landownership and were subject to brutal pogroms, the worst occurring in Los Angeles.

But the greatest irony is that both Latinos and African Americans do worse in California than in  “unenlightened places”  like Texas and Florida.

The key difference in California has been the imposition of draconian environmental regulations, which have devastated industries like construction, manufacturing, and logistics. 

It’s what attorney Jennifer Hernandez calls “the green Jim Crow.”  

Latinos have been hardest hit because many are employed in the “carbon economy,” which relies on energy and has been decimated by regulatory pressures. 

For example, Latinos constitute well over 50% of all California construction workers and the majority working in logistics, according to the American Community Survey.  

But due to regulatory constraints, construction in California has been among the weakest in the nation, making it hard to build what the market wants — namely, affordable apartments and modestly-priced single family homes. 

Keep reading