Tag: climategate

Climate extremists make our kids despair — and groom them to join the left’s crusades

Extreme privilege and fame have never been a recipe for emotional stability, but today’s Hollywood offspring seem especially unequipped to face reality.

Case in point: Ramona Sarsgaard, the 18-year-old daughter of actors Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, who was arrested this month for criminal trespass during a pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University’s Butler Library.

This wasn’t her first foray into activism. Sarsgaard has been a committed climate crusader since childhood.

At just 13, she gave a speech at Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience award ceremony in honor of Greta Thunberg.

Like Thunberg, Ramona has built her identity around the belief that climate catastrophe is not only inevitable but imminent.

Sarsgaard marched in the Youth Climate Strike in New York and, according to her mother, is among the many children who “aren’t able to push out of their minds the dire situation that we’re in.”

She’s not alone: An entire generation has been raised to believe they are living through the end of the world — and their mental health reflects it.

Just this week Violet Affleck, 19, daughter of Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, published an essay in Yale University’s “Global Health Review” describing a heated conflict with her mother earlier this year.

“I spent the January fires in Los Angeles arguing with my mother in a hotel room,” she wrote — in fights triggered by Garner’s shock at the devastation.

“As a lifelong Angelena and climate-literate member of Generation Z,” Violet explained, “my question had not been whether the Palisades would burn but when.”

She went on to call climate change an “existential and accelerating” crisis.

It’s clear she wasn’t just debating a hot topic with her mother — she was evangelizing a worldview that sees environmental collapse as a given.

If that mindset sounds extreme, that’s because it’s being carefully cultivated.

Affleck’s worldview was deliberately drilled into her by climate activists, who have groomed an entire generation to join their crusade. 

At institutions like Yale, climate anxiety is treated as a developmental inevitability.

An advice column in a Yale newsletter a few years ago instructed parents and caregivers to lead even the youngest children through therapeutic climate exercises, like imagining their favorite animal being impacted by climate change and speaking from its perspective.

Just imagine launching that conversation with your 4-year-old: “Think of Peter Rabbit. Now imagine Peter has run out of food and dies because he’s too thirsty, has no grass to eat, and no shade to take refuge in as temperatures soar.”

You couldn’t come up with a more traumatic lesson for a young child to engage in if you tried —yet the “experts” at Yale recommend it as a therapeutic template to explain to children that the world is ending.

Keep reading

The Net Zero Agenda’s Continued Collapse Into Chaos

Last week, Ofgem announced that the Energy Price Cap would be lowered. From July, average bill payers will see “a decrease of 7% compared to the cap set between April 1st to June 30th, 2025”. The likes of Ed Miliband were quick to capture the good news by reaffirming the Government’s commitment to the 2050 Net Zero and 2030 Clean Power agendas. But a closer look at the detail of the price cut and other news shows just how fragile those agendas really are.

The news that there would be a price cut was not unexpected. Energy price caps are announced quarterly. As reported here, the Spring (April-June) price cap rise was announced in February – the third since the Labour Government was elected in July last year on the promise of “lower bills”. “Energy bills are set to rise again due to a spike in global gas markets,” claimed Ed Miliband ahead of Ofgem’s February rise. But there is no such thing as “global gas markets”. And that “spike” had already passed.

A post-pandemic low price of gas on UK markets had occurred in February 2024 at around 56p per therm (29.3 kWh). But over the next year, this price increased to 142p, peaking on February 11th. On February 25th, Ofgem announced a 6.4% price cap increase for the second quarter of this year. But by the time of Ofgem’s announcement, a mere fortnight later, the price had fallen to 106p – a fall of 25%. Into the second quarter, the price fell further, reaching a low of 69p – or less than half of February’s spike price – on April 7th. The price then stabilised at around 83p (around 42% of the peak price).

“It’s great news the energy price cap is going down, but we have more to do”, tweeted Ed Milband in response to last week’s announcement from Ofgem – as if he and his policies had caused the price drop. “Our clean power mission is the route to long-term energy security and lower bills,” he added. Odd, isn’t it, that a 6.4% increase in the cap was blamed on (non-existent) “global gas markets”, but that a 7% drop in the cap, following a 42% reduction in UK gas prices, is not blamed on the same outside forces, but is instead given as cause to double down on the green agenda.

The clues are there for those whose capacity for simple maths is not hindered by green ideology… a 42% reduction in UK gas prices yielded only a 7% drop in the energy price cap. But doesn’t Miliband tell us that “global gas prices” are the cause of all our problems? 

And not just Milband. In the Times, the Green Blob’s favourite du jour talking point is reproduced uncritically by the newspaper’s Energy Editor, Emily Gosden. “Unlinking electricity prices from gas ‘would cut energy bills’,” claims the headline. According to this meme, remastered by energy market consultant Adam Bell, formerly Head of Energy Strategy at BEIS and Senior Policy Advisor at DECC, the “link” between gas prices and electricity prices could be “cut”. According to the article, “Britain’s wholesale market operates on a system of ‘marginal pricing’ whereby the most expensive plant needed to keep the lights on determines the price all generators are paid”.

Keep reading

Green Agenda Has Cost British Households £220 Billion Since 2006: Study

British consumers have paid nearly £220 billion more on their energy prices over the past two decades as a result of Westminster’s radical green agenda schemes, a report from a leading energy consultancy firm has found.

The UK public has been “seduced by narratives that renewables are cheap,” however, according to a study conducted by Watt-Logic’s Kathryn Porter presented by Lord Offord, the Shadow Energy Minister in the House of Lords, has found that the opposite is true, with the green agenda not only siphoning off taxpayer cash subsidies but also driving up energy costs for consumers.

“That renewables are not cheap should be clear, based both on the evidence that after 35 years of subsidies, we are yet to see any benefits through lower bills,” the report found.

According to Porter’s calculations, if the British government had not embarked upon its so-called green energy transition programme, British households would have saved £218 billion since 2006.

The report found that the direct cost of net zero policies in 2023-24 accounted for £17 billion in additional costs on consumer energy bills, and it predicted that this would continue to rise to more than £20 billion in 2029-30.

Porter acknowledged that gas prices were impacted by the Ukraine War and broader Western conflict with Russia, however, she noted that this would not explain why energy prices have steadily risen for the two decades prior to the 2021-23 gas crisis in Europe.

Keep reading

“Reduce the Need for Personal Vehicles”: Top Massachusetts Democrat Wants to Limit How Many Miles Residents Can Drive or Drive at All, Because ‘Climate Change’

Massachusetts Senate Majority Leader Cynthia Stone Creem (D) introduced a bill this year to create a commission with the goal of reducing the number of miles driven by residents in their cars because of ‘climate change’, with an ultimate goal to “reduce the need for personal vehicles.”

The 82-year-old Creem wants the state government to promulgate regulations that could fine residents for driving too much and force them into riding public transportation, using bikes paths and walking.

Excerpts from Bill S. 2246:

(b) No metropolitan planning organization shall approve a Regional Transportation Plan or Transportation Improvement Program developed pursuant to 23 CFR Part 450, and the department shall not approve a Statewide Transportation Improvement Program, unless the plan or program, including any mitigation measures interlinked to individual projects within the plan or program, provides a reasonable pathway to compliance with the greenhouse gas emissions sublimits for the transportation set pursuant to section 3A of chapter 21N and to the statewide vehicles miles traveled reduction goals established by the secretary pursuant to section 81 of this chapter.

SKIP

(f) The department may promulgate rules or regulations for the implementation of this section.

Section 81. (a) To relieve traffic congestion, improve air quality, and promote compliance with the greenhouse gas emissions limits established pursuant to chapter 21N, the secretary shall, in consultation with the secretary of economic development, the secretary of energy and environmental affairs, and the secretary of housing and livable communities, set a statewide vehicle miles traveled reduction goal for the year 2030 and for every fifth year thereafter. The vehicle miles traveled reduction goals shall be incorporated into: (i) the greenhouse gas emissions sublimits for the transportation sector set pursuant to subsection (b) of section 3A of chapter 21N; and (ii) the roadmap plans published pursuant to subsection (b) of section 3 of said chapter 21N.

SKIP

The council shall assess and report on strategies and plans necessary to reduce statewide vehicles miles traveled through the establishment of an equitable, interconnected, accessible and reliable network of non-personal vehicle transportation options and through land use policies that reduce the need for personal vehicles. The plan shall facilitate: (i) compliance with the greenhouse gas emissions limits and sublimits set pursuant to chapter 21N of the General Laws, with emphasis on compliance with the emissions limits and sublimits set for 2030; (ii) attainment of the numerical benchmarks for vehicle miles traveled set pursuant to section 81 of chapter 6C; (iii) the development of compact, walkable neighborhoods; and (iv) advancement of access to, and affordability of, non-personal vehicle transportation options.

The assessment shall include, but not be limited to: (i) the present condition of, and future needs for, non-personal vehicle transportation infrastructure and services, including, but not limited to, bicycle paths and lanes; bicycle sharing stations; pedestrian paths; bus, ferry, subway, and train services; transportation demand management programs; and microtransit programs ; (ii) the present status of, and future needs for, land use policies that reduce the need for personal vehicles; (iii) suggestions for optimal locations for new, expanded or improved non-personal vehicle transportation options in urban, suburban and rural areas including, but not limited to, low-income and moderate-income communities; (iv) discussion of programs and policies that may incentivize residents to adopt non-personal vehicle transportation options; (v) discussion of present and projected future costs and methods of financing those costs; (viii) recommendations to assist local governmental and private sector officials in expanding access to non-personal vehicle transportation options and in planning and developing compact, walkable neighborhoods; and (ix) identification and discussion of current policies and recommendations for policies, laws and regulatory actions that may facilitate reductions in vehicle miles traveled.

Keep reading

BBC Reporter Shows How To Spread Extreme Climate Alarm

A gleeful, self-satisfied Mr Punch was often heard to remark: “That’s the way to do it.” Today we examine how Mark Poynting, one of the BBC’s top doom-mongering Net Zero activists, uses the trusted ‘scientists say’ message to turn a centennial sea level rise of around 30 cm into prose stating: “The world could see hugely damaging sea-level rises of several metres or more over the coming centuries”. Added fear is inserted into the mix with the warning that the disappearing act will occur, “even if the ambitious target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C is met, scientists have warned”.

Poynting and the BBC are essentially telling a worldwide audience that coastal land and beyond across the world could be overwhelmed with several metres of sea rise if the global temperature is three-tenths of a degree centigrade higher. This message properly belongs on a doomsday sandwich board walker, not least because the rise in temperature is almost within the margin of error of constantly-adjusted and unnaturally-heated global temperature datasets.

Extrapolating computer modelled data rigged with improbable ‘pathways’ that even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change more or less dismiss as ‘low confidence’ – that’s the way to do it.

The BBC story is based on the recent compilation and interpretation of material from a group led by Geography Professor Chris Stokes. This provides just the sort of findings that are catnip to the BBC. At one point the authors seem to think that humans can control the amount of ice on both Greenland and Antarctica, arguing that the global mean temperature should be reduced with further work “urgently required to more precisely determine a ‘safe limit’ for ice sheets“. Given the catastrophic consequences of a rapid collapse of one or more ice sheets, the authors state, “we conclude that adopting the precautionary principle is imperative and that a global mean temperature cooler than present is required to keep ice sheets broadly in equilibrium”.

That’s the way to do it. Poynting could have informed his gaslit readers that overall ice loss in Antarctica is minimal with suggestions of an annual 100 gigatonnes reduction equivalent to 0.00041% of the total mass – well within the margin of error. At current rates of melting on a continent that has seen no overall warming for at least 70 years, it would take around 300,000 years for all the ice to disappear. And this assumes no intervening glaciations, a new ice age, or just more accurate measurements. Instead he reports the comments of the Stokes crew that the “major concern is that melting could accelerate further beyond ‘tipping points’ due to warming caused by humans”. That’s the way to do it – talk about ‘tipping points’ that never occur and then cover yourself by adding “though it’s not clear exactly how these mechanisms work and where the thresholds sit”.

Instead of “not exactly clear”, try, “haven’t got a clue”. But it is “precautionary” to remove hydrocarbons from modern use and drive humanity back to the dark ages – just in case the model inventions do occur.

Keep reading

Buckling under to the Green New Deal

In an earlier article for American Thinker, I wrote about the Conservative Climate Caucus in Congress, providing proof that bad ideas can flourish on both sides of the political divide. I concluded the article by warning readers that it was important to eliminate all vestiges of the Green New Deal and stop subsidy-seeking companies from manipulating the political environment to enrich themselves at the expense of the public.

To my dismay, the forces arrayed against this happening have prevailed. With Trump’s electoral victory and the Republican’s success in winning the Senate and House, I would have thought that there was a chance of rolling back the Green New Deal. I was wrong. Alex Epstein writes about it in his substack of May 19th, describing how Republicans got roped into a deal that keeps the IRA (a.k.a. Green New Deal) intact. The details that he describes are rather involved but the upshot is that the Republicans folded like a house of cards when they came under pressure from the wind and solar lobbies.

I have written at length about the value proposition of renewables; what I mean by value proposition is the negative value that renewables add to the energy sector. They increase cost and decrease reliability, but continue to be pushed by green crusaders and subsidy-seeking companies (read Baptists and Bootleggers) who have powerful influence in government. Speaking out against them are myself and others like Alex Epstein, but it does not seem like a fair fight. The amount of money invested by parties in the status quo is so immense that they will not go quietly into the night. They are squeezing congressmen by telling them that their districts will lose federal funds, their constituents will lose jobs, and the planet will perish. It takes a strong principled man to stand up to that type of pressure.

I recall two times in recent memory when politicians buckled under such pressure. One was during the mortgage crisis of 2008 when Wall Street bankers and their friends at the Fed and Treasury painted a picture of an economic meltdown to Bush Jr. if he did not go along with the bailout. The other was in the early days of COVID when Fauci and company painted a picture of widespread death if Trump did not go along with the lockdowns. Saving the Green New Deal constitutes a third instance that is just as bad as the others.

Keep reading

There is no climate change crisis; there’s a crisis of corrupted politicians and institutions

Kooky tales about Antarctica abound – including the presence of UFOs, a lost civilisation and a passage to Earth’s interior. All are generally dismissed as absurd. Yet, some widely accepted claims about climate change and ice sheets at the planet’s southernmost end are equally far-fetched.

The world is told daily that rising CO2 levels are melting polar ice, shrinking crop yields and pushing humanity toward extinction. “Institute radical decarbonisation or we’re all dead!” is the cry of our enlightened overlords, as if swapping incandescent bulbs for LEDs and banning gas cars would spare us from their predicted apocalypse. They demand immediate economic hara-kiri to avoid weather predictions based on pseudoscience and outright deception.

Real-world data – from Brazil’s record harvests to the rebound of Antarctica’s ice – expose the climate crusade for the baseless hysteria that it is.

Brazil’s Agricultural Triumph

The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics projects cereals, legumes and oilseeds to reach more than 325 million metric tonnes of production this year, an 11% increase over 2024.

Production of soyabeans, another cornerstone crop of global food security, is expected to hit 161 million metric tonnes in Brazil, a 6% jump from the previous year, according to the US Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service. Brazil’s National Supply Corporation forecasts total grain production to be more than 322 million metric tonnes, up over 8% from the prior harvest, as rice leads with an increase of nearly 10% in planted area.

What does this mean for you? These numbers are evidence of a thriving agricultural sector that feeds millions worldwide. Brazil’s success challenges dire warnings from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) of rising CO2 and temperatures disrupting agriculture.

Warmer climates and higher CO2 levels are enhancing plant growth, as warmth extends growing seasons and CO2 acts as a natural fertiliser, facts that are evident across the globe.

Antarctica’s ice rebound

Far south of Brazil, in the freezing landscape of Antarctica, another climate myth is derailed. A poster child of climate disaster forecasts, Antarctica is adding to its inventory of ice for the first time in decades. Recent data reveal that Antarctica’s ice sheet is growing. Between 2021 and 2023, Antarctic ice gained mass at a rate of approximately 108 metric gigatons per year, driven by anomalous precipitation accumulation.

This marks the first sustained ice growth in decades and should be headline news. The melting of polar ice has long been used to justify urgent policy interventions – from net-zero mandates to oil and gas restrictions to agricultural taxes. We were told rising CO₂ meant inevitable ice loss and catastrophic sea-level rise. But when the ice grows instead of shrinks, the climate establishment barely flinches.

Why are the people most entrusted with global climate policy ignoring or dismissing data like this? And more importantly, why are policymakers doubling down on economically destructive climate agendas when the physical world is contradicting their models?

Some independent researchers, farmers and energy analysts have raised red flags about flawed assumptions underlying the climate narrative. But they are often silenced or labelled “deniers” – a term designed to shut down inquiry rather than invite discussion.

Record crops and growing ice sheets are empirical evidence that challenge climate orthodoxy. Ignoring this information is not only unscientific but also immoral.

Keep reading

Mile High Marxist Bernie Sanders Proves There Is No Climate Emergency

Give the devil his due: Senator Bernie Sanders never misses an opportunity to remind Americans about our planet’s supposed peril. In a 2023 MSNBC op-ed, he whined: “The climate crisis is not just an environmental issue. It is a matter of justice, of health, of economics, and of national security.” According to Sanders, climate change is a moral and existential threat demanding sweeping government intervention and dramatic changes in personal behavior.

Except, of course, when it comes to how he lives his own life.

Sanders’ recent “Fighting Oligarchy” tour paints a very different picture. While crisscrossing the country decrying the evils of capitalism, Sanders traveled by—you guessed it—private jet. According to a new analysis from Power The Future, the senator’s 16-stop tour spewed an estimated 62.15 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

To put in context, that’s more than the average American produces in five years.

In fact, Sanders’ emissions from just one tour equal the annual emissions from 15 gasoline-powered cars. It’s the carbon equivalent to driving a gas-powered SUV 150,000 miles, or more than 6 times around the Earth at the equator. And this from a man who wants to regulate what kind of stove you use in your kitchen.

When questioned about the blatant hypocrisy, Sanders didn’t offer contrition. He doubled down. “You think I’m gonna be sitting on a waiting line at United… while 30,000 people are waiting?” he snapped at Bret Baier.

This isn’t the first time Sanders’ climate preaching has clashed with his jet-setting lifestyle. During the 2020 Democratic primary, his campaign shelled out over $1.2 million on private jet travel. Then, as now, the justification was the same: it’s okay when Bernie does it because his cause is righteous.

Let’s call this what it is: Mile High Marxism. Sanders flies high above the rest of us, belching carbon into the atmosphere while demanding working families pay more for energy and drive electric vehicles. He insists there’s a climate emergency but behaves like there’s no emergency at all.

The green movement is filled with elites just like Sanders—people who use the language of crisis to amass power while living above the consequences of their policies. They want to ban gas cars, restrict domestic energy production, and ration electricity, but they’ll never give up their jets, SUVs, or lakefront mansions. It’s not about saving the planet. It’s about control.

Consider this: if the planet were truly teetering on the edge of climate catastrophe, would the loudest alarmists be the least willing to change their own behavior? If climate change were the existential threat they claim, wouldn’t they at least attempt to lead by example? Instead, we get moral lectures from the tarmac.

Keep reading

Daily Mail Misses the Real Story About Long-Term Stable Antarctica Ice in Dumb Quip About Climate ‘Deniers’

A remarkably silly headline appeared last week in the Daily Mail stating: ‘Shocking Antarctica discovery sends climate change deniers into mass celebration.’ It appears that 100 gigatonnes of ice has been added to the Antarctica ice sheet in a 21-month period to December 2023. Quite how joy will be unconfined in the ranks of the ‘deniers’ over an increase, or decrease, of 0.00041% is not clear. The amount is an ice sheet rounding error and it would be scientifically accurate to refer to it as zero. Even if the figure was a loss, it would take nearly half a million years for all the ice in Antarctica to melt and that does not include any allowance for glacial periods or indeed a new ice age. Unsurprising, in the haste to stick ‘denier’ into the mix, a far more important finding about Antarctica ice was missed. A recent paper undergoing peer review has calculated that around 2,546 gt of ice has been added every year since 1960 to the surface on Antarctica. This would almost certainly have been enough to stabilise any natural losses and it is possible that the ice sheet has been stable or even growing slowly over this period.

The figures for Antarctica’s overall ice mass are difficult to calculate. They must include losses from ice calving and melting and they are thought to total around 2,000 gt a year. Driving ice accumulation in Antarctica is snowfall and there is some evidence that the area is receiving more precipitation than previously thought. The paper led by Dr Christiaan van Dalum of Utrecht University suggests heavy recent accumulations of ice in Antarctica that appear to outweigh any losses at the coast. There is said to be increased precipitation in the mountains of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula.

It is not always clear in scientific papers just what the authors are comparing. The Daily Mail story arises from a Chinese group whose work on the Antarctica ice sheet appears to concentrate on just four eastern glacial basins. The Chinese findings suggest little or no change while van Dalum points to increases over the entire continent even allowing for significant losses due to natural events. Nevertheless, the key to understanding climate change lies in the length of the observations. Drawing celebratory conclusions over less than two years’ supposed growth is junk science, possibly designed to boost clicks and impress potential advertisers. Assessing results over 60 years as the Dalum paper does offers greater understanding of the dynamics of polar ice.

Keep reading

Why has an eco-extremist been given a royal seal of approval?

King Charles has pulled off an impressive PR rehabilitation since his Coronation in 2023. The British public now hears little about the aristocratic indulgences he was famed for as a prince, from his insistence on wearing ironed shoelaces to his portable loo seat. Nor do we hear a great deal about the quixotic beliefs of this self-confessed eco-nut who used to hold conversations with his plants. But sometimes the mask slips.

This week’s announcement by the King’s Foundation was one such moment. Charles’s private charity, which he established in 1990 to advance his ‘philosophy of harmony’, has named 35 of its favourite ‘changemakers’ under the age of 35 to celebrate the charity’s 35th year. They were identified, we are told, after an ‘exhaustive search’ across the UK and selected on the basis of their ability to advocate for the ‘change we want to see in the world’.

Of course, the ‘we’ in that sentence probably means Charles. At the very least, his underlings will have chosen figures likely to chime with his sensibilities. As such, these choices offer an alarming insight into the curious priorities of the reigning monarch.

One of the ’changemakers’ is environmentalist Jack Harries, who was arrested in 2019 at an Extinction Rebellion (XR) protest. Harries, making what he presumably believed was a brave stand against the evils of the fossil-fuel industry, glued his hands to the door of a hotel that was hosting a petroleum conference.

Although XR has been edged aside recently by other eco-groups like Just Stop Oil and Youth Demand, it pioneered the use of disruptive stunts and street theatre to draw attention to its mad demands. Its members would often paint their faces white and dress in red cloaks, performing choreographed dances in public, incanting about the impending climate apocalypse.

Keep reading