In the 1970s, we were warned of a coming Ice Age.[i]
In the 1990s, Al Gore launched a treatise on global warming.[ii]
After years of the globe not warming, the menace was rebranded “climate change.”
Gore told us specifically in 2006 that we had ten years to stop either the warming or the changing, not sure which rendition he was singing at the time, or we’d perish from the Earth within 10 years.[iii]
Six years beyond Gore’s predicted doomsday, I don’t know of an American city that has gone underwater and I believe Gore owns ocean-view property[iv] as does former President Barack Obama[v] and John Kerry[vi], who claim alterations in climate constitute an existential threat to our existence.
Because of this phantom foe, the aforementioned and many others, mostly Democrat strategists, want to bypass our greatest natural resource[vii] and expend trillions of tax dollars – with billions already wasted – developing so-called clean or renewable energy.
The climate issue is saturated with the modus operandi of those who never let a crisis go to waste, and now even elevate simple concerns to crisis level for political exploitation.
Dire Consequences
Squandering our energy independence has severely damaged our way of life economically. But in addition to igniting inflation, our national security is endangered when we make concessions to adversaries because we need what we could otherwise tap from our own pipelines.
Had we maintained the domestic energy production level established under President Trump (becoming the world’s third leading exporter of energy in 2019[viii]), would Russia have invaded Ukraine? If we were able to subsidize the energy needs of Europe, would Putin have the funds to shell Kiev? We don’t know, but we wouldn’t have the “Putin price increase” at the pump.
Climate concerns are grossly overblown.[ix] Like mask mandates and vaccine job requirements, it’s another tool for control and – I suspect, with supporting evidence to follow – a means of enriching the politically connected.
Protesting this climate folly will have you labeled a “climate denier” and anything you post on social media contrary to their claims is likely to draw a warning label, suspension or permanent ban. It’s not even a subject open to debate; free speech be darned!
At Least $1.6 Billion Wasted
How in the name of Solyndra are we putting up with this? You remember Solyndra, I hope – the marquee green-energy boondoggle of the Obama administration. It was the headliner of the stimulus package that poured massive amounts of taxpayer funding into alternative-energy companies that went out of business within a few years thereafter.
Here is Forbes magazine’s list[x] of six such companies, and the amount of our 2010 “stimulus” money that went down the drain:
- Solyndra – $570 million
- Abound Solar – $401 million
- Calisolar – $280 million
- Fisker Automotive – $193 million
- A123 Systems – $132 million[xi]
- ABB, Inc. – $12.6 million
Why does government endow private companies? Do you think it’s coincidence that one of the Solyndra principals was an Obama donor and campaign bundler in his re-election?[xii]
The Forbes article obtained its data from a report[xiii] that surmised:
“Cronyism is evident from our research. In addition to picks that often look political, EXIM frequently participates in the funding of specially connected companies alongside other federal grant and loan agencies, including the Small Business Administration, Department of Energy, and Department of Agriculture.”
A great article on ThisNation-dot-com[xiv] explains our current energy production situation succinctly and fairly. It also notes the wasted funding on renewable sources, stating:
“Even though renewables are widely promoted, between 1957 and 2019, renewable energy’s share of the energy consumption market has only grown by four percentage points. This is astounding when one considers the billions of taxpayer dollars that have been used to subsidize renewables.”
President Biden’s proposed budget released a few weeks ago contained $21.3 billion to fund climate-related programs. If that budget is enacted, it will be interesting to follow the money.
Death By Debt
After the covenant with Noah, God said he’d never again flood the entire world (Gen 9:11). Maybe you don’t believe God, or believe in God, but you should at least count the cost of abandoning fossil fuel for a technology that has thus far proven grossly unworthy of the tax dollars it has devoured.
With expenditures such as those enumerated wasted on green energy, is it any wonder that our national debt now exceeds $30 trillion? To comprehend the magnitude, guess how many years it would take to eradicate this debt if we paid it off at $1every second.
When would we be debt free? In 50 years? Or 200; maybe 500?
How about 595,648 years! Do the math. It’s staggering.
We can’t afford to waste another penny.
The federal government should not fund private business, and probably not even non-profit causes – at least not without a super majority vote. We should amend our constitution accordingly.
In the meantime, we need a President who will veto any bill containing any amount of tax dollars going to a private business. This will have the same effect as a super majority is required to over-ride a presidential veto.
Like Jan. 6, An Inflamed Narrative
This may seem like going off on a tangent, but we’ll make the connection.
Democrats and their media sycophants were terming the protest at the Capitol on January 6 of last year an “insurrection,” long before anybody was charged with such a crime. Only after officials of the Department of Justice and the FBI were embarrassed by questioning from Senator Ted Cruz and other Republicans in a January 2022 hearing[xv] was anyone charged with “seditious conspiracy,”[xvi] a reasonable facsimile of insurrection.
Let’s see if any convictions result, but we’ve yet to hear of anyone caught red-handed with a cache of weapons, military armament or detailed plans for instituting a new government.
Memorializing the protest of January 6 to the level of Pearl Harbor or 9/11 is the stuff of drama kings and queens. But it fits the pattern also embedded in the climate hysteria – maximized embellishment for political effect.
Words matter. Our communication suffers enormously from a lack of precision.
Some examples:
- We’ve enacted a so-called “infrastructure bill” that contains very little infrastructure.[xvii]
- Democrats have proposed legislation they call a “voting rights” bill that’s really about usurping each state’s right to manage elections.[xviii]
- Florida passed a bill banning discussions of sex and gender for K through third graders. It’s been distorted as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill to rile up the LBGTQ community against the state’s Republican governor.
You see the pattern? I’ve cited these examples to demonstrate how inaccurate labelling kills any chance of rational discussion, no matter the topic.
Proper Climate Concerns
The shut-up-and-believe-anything-we-say admonishments are a telltale sign that not all legitimate scientists believe climate apocalypse is imminent.
Writing in Forbes,[xix] Michael Shellenberger[xx] presents a very reasoned comprehensive argument for which a key takeaway is that “no credible scientific body has ever said climate change threatens the collapse of civilization much less the extinction of the human species.”
The Cornwall Alliance is a group approaching the subject from the angle of Biblical stewardship. It’s produced a DVD Where The Grass Is Greener. Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, theologian and scholar who founded the alliance, said on a Wallbuilders Live broadcast[xxi] several years ago:
“The best scientific research is that recent and foreseeable global warming has been largely natural, part of normal cycles of warming and cooling. Human contribution is probably real but so small as to be virtually undetectable and certainly not of any environmental significance and efforts to reduce that human contribution would have costs that far exceed any benefits that would come from it.”
Alarm over warming in the Arctic Ocean was reported in the Washington Post[xxii] – in 1922, a time of almost zero carbon emissions. There have been natural disasters throughout history. Deaths from extreme weather measured from 1900 to 2010 have declined by more than 90 percent despite a quadrupling of the population.[xxiii]
The real irony of this is that if the climate alarmists get their way, how long before they’re complaining about the environmental impact of mining for the raw materials of batteries?[xxiv]
All Of the Above, On a Level Playing Field
The war in Ukraine should prompt even the most deeply climate concerned to re-evaluate – and re-investigate – their views on domestic energy production. Concerns of future climate conditions – analyzed accurately – require measurement against here-and-now realities.
As of 2018, according to the World Atlas,[xxv] natural gas and petroleum accounted for about 60 percent of our energy use. Coal provides about 17 percent, renewable sources about 13 percent, and nuclear – which is clean energy – almost 10 percent.
We should press full speed ahead on all of them – without any more taxpayer funding. The role of government is to provide a level playing field: not to pick winners and losers.
Oil and gas is plentiful withing our borders and surely the backbone of our economy. Sorry I can’t find more recent data, but as of 2013:
“Currently, the government leases only 2 percent of federal offshore areas and less than 6 percent of federal onshore lands for oil and natural gas production,” said the IER report, which then listed areas the U.S. could open to oil and gas development that included:
- The Arctic Wildlife Refuge
- The outer continental shelf of the lower 48 states
- The Naval Petroleum Reserve in Alaska
- The continental shelf of Alaska
- The geologic provinces north of the Arctic circle
- The Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming
This report claimed the value of our oil and gas reserves at almost six times the national debt – $150 trillion. So if ever we have to liquidate, this is the asset that could rescue us from a 595,000-year payback plan.
Don’t fall for the Biden Administration excuse that oil companies have leases they’re not working. As The Energy Collective Group explained[xxvi] in a post last November:
“Obtaining a permit is just one step in the chain that ultimately results in oil production. There are many other links in that chain, some of which are still problematic today.”
Rely on American Ingenuity – and God
At the turn of the 20th century, it looked as if the earth could become covered in horse manure. But Henry Ford never received a stimulus check. Nonetheless, his assembly-line made automobile ownership affordable to the masses.
Today we’ve become accustomed to government draining the treasury for some special interest; the ruinous consequences are apparent to reasonably minded people of all political persuasion.
Renewable energy has to compete in a fair and free market. No matter what level of our need it can contribute, Dr. Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance says to fear not!
“An omniscient God designed, and omnipotent God created and a faithful God sustains the earth and all its ecosystems,” Dr. Beisner wrote. “It’s hard to believe that a God who loves us would design the world so that when we use the resources in it to meet our needs and improve human lives would be causing catastrophe.”
At this point, you’ve just read 1,800 words on this consequential matter. The 25 end notes below verify our key points but also provide deeper exploration.
[i] https://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/06/04/the-1970s-ice-age-myth-and-time-magazine-covers-by-david-kirtley and https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/the-1970s-ice-age-scare/
[ii] https://heartland.org/news-opinion/news/how-al-gore-built-the-global-warming-fraud
[iii] https://youtu.be/-Z_IC3xrgJk
[iv] https://www.worldpropertyjournal.com/featured-columnists/celebrity-homes-column-al-gore-tipper-gore-oprah-winfrey-michael-douglas-christopher-lloyd-fred-couples-nicolas-cage-peter-reckell-kelly-moneymaker-2525.php
[v] https://nypost.com/article/inside-obamas-marthas-vineyard-estate/
[vi] https://www.dailywire.com/news/irony-alert-bidens-climate-czar-john-kerry-owns-12-million-beachfront-home
[vii] http://www.qrinc.com/a-list-of-natural-resources/
[viii] https://www.wsj.com/articles/deregulation-energy-independence-fracking-hydraulic-fracturing-11633462282
[ix] https://thenewamerican.com/climate-alarmists-have-been-wrong-about-virtually-everything/
[x] https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/04/12/remembering-solyndra–how-many-570m-green-energy-failures-are-hidden-inside-bidens-instructure-proposal/?sh=74d8a5092672
[xi] https://spectator.org/solyndra-nation/
[xii] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-donor-discussed-solyndra-with-white-house/
[xiii]https://www.openthebooks.com/assets/1/6/Federal_Transfer_Report_Addendum_Green_Energy.pdf
[xiv] https://www.thisnation.com/politics/economy/what-happened-to-the-united-states-being-energy-independent/
[xv] https://youtu.be/ePxjwXAIf2E
[xvi] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/oath-keepers-leader-10-others-charged-with-seditious-conspiracy-for-capitol-insurrection
[xvii] https://fortune.com/2021/04/06/biden-infrastructure-plan-what-is-in-it-policy-proposal/
[xviii] https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-in-the-democrats-voting-rights-bill-11618058556
[xix] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/11/25/why-everything-they-say-about-climate-change-is-wrong/?sh=412414e612d6
[xx] https://shellenberger.org/
[xxi] https://wallbuilderslive.com/global-warming-from-scientific-theory-to-irrational-religion/
[xxii] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/warm-welcome/
[xxiii] https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/files/deaths_from_extreme_weather_1900_2010.pdf
[xxiv] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2017/08/17/batteries-impose-hidden-environmental-costs-for-wind-and-solar-power/?sh=66394f9ab4e1
[xxv] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-are-the-major-sources-of-energy-in-the-united-states.html
[xxvi] https://energycentral.com/c/ec/what-holding-back-us-oil-production