St. Greta Claims Scotland Is No World Leader On Climate Crisis (scam)

You know what would be cool? If St. Greta of Stockholm told all her acolytes to practice what they preach. Give up their own massive carbon footprints. And, hey, maybe get a degree

Greta Thunberg: Scotland not a world leader on climate change

St. GretaCampaigner Greta Thunberg says she doesn’t regard Scotland as a world leader on climate change.

The Swedish activist told BBC Scotland she recognised that some countries “do a bit more than others” but that none were coming close to what was needed.

On the Scottish Greens’ deal to enter government, she said some politicians were “less worse” than others.

But she said tackling climate change was not as easy as voting for a green party.

The 18-year-old said: “Of course there might be some politicians that are slightly less worse than others. That was very mean but you get the point.

“It’s a hopeful sign that people want something that’s more ‘green’ – whatever green means – but in order to solve this we need to tackle this at a more systemic approach.”

In other words, she wants more dictatorial government, telling people how to live their lives and forcing them to comply. No one should expect anything else from climate cultists.

Ms Thunberg still believes the conference will not lead to anything “if we don’t treat this crisis like a crisis.”

She explained: “It should be all about climate justice and we can’t achieve climate justice if everyone is not contributing on the same terms.

Climate justice is a political term, requiring political, not scientific, solutions, usually involving force from government towards citizens.

Speaking of politics

Climate change in election spotlight in oil giant Norway

Climate change has surfaced as a key issue for Norwegian voters in a Sept. 12-13 parliamentary election, and none more so than in the country’s oil industry capital, Stavanger, which is preparing for a low-carbon future. (snip)

The opposition Labour party and its allies including the Socialist Left are widely expected to replace the ruling coalition of Conservative Prime Minister Erna Solberg, polls indicate. Labour supports continued petroleum exploration while the Socialist Left opposes it.

Since the publication of a United Nations report https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/un-sounds-clarion-call-over-irreversible-climate-impacts-by-humans-2021-08-09 on Aug. 9 warning that global warming was dangerously close to spiralling out of control, parties that prioritise climate change, such as the Green Party and the Socialist Left, have seen their popularity rise in polls. The Greens saw a 25% rise in their party’s membership.

The better the pro-environmental parties perform in the election, the more likely they will be able to force through curbs on oil companies, such as limiting where they can look for new fields.

Still, it will be a tall order to call time — as the Greens want — on a sector that accounts for 42% of national exports and employs around 160,000 people.

Either people will say “no” to the Greens, because Doing Something about ‘climate change’ is popular in theory, not practice, or they empower the Greens and deal with the fallout, having to wait till the next election to replace them while dealing with the economic destruction caused by the Green’s policies.

Read: St. Greta Claims Scotland Is No World Leader On Climate Crisis (scam) »

White House To Afghan Who Helped Rescue Biden In 2008: “Thank You” And Psaki Deflections

Well, this is pretty much what the Biden admin and State Dept have been saying for days, namely, that these people are mostly on their own

White House thanks interpreter in hiding who helped rescue Biden in 2008 and commits to evacuating Afghan partners

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday praised the Afghan interpreter in hiding who helped rescue then-Sen. Joe Biden during a 2008 rescue mission as she reaffirmed the US’ commitment to helping Afghan allies.

“Our message to him is: Thank you for fighting by our side for the last 20 years. Thank you for the role you played in helping a number of my favorite people out of a snowstorm and for all the work you did. And our commitment is enduring, not just to American citizens but to our Afghan partners who have fought by our side,” Psaki said.

“And our efforts and our focus right now is, as you’ve heard Gen. McKenzie say and others say over the last 24 hours, is to the diplomatic phase. We will get you out. We will honor your service. And we’re committed to doing exactly that.”

The interpreter, who is going only by his first name, Mohammed, told the Wall Street Journal that he is asking the President to “save me and my family” after US forces allowed him to enter Kabul’s airport during their evacuation mission but restricted his wife and children. (snip)

The Journal reported that Mohammed has had his Special Immigrant Visa stuck in processing. The program is meant to provide a pathway to the United States for Afghans who were employed by or worked on behalf of the US government, but many have had trouble navigating the program’s process amid the US’ frantic scramble to evacuate.

That’s a lot of gobbledegook from Psaki, exactly what we’d expect. What, exactly, is the U.S. to do? We have no military left in Afghanistan: Joe pulled them out before we could get everyone out. He set the conditions for the quick and total takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. This could have gone different

Biden TURNED DOWN Taliban offer to let America secure all of Kabul after President Ashraf Ghani fled country, report claims

The Biden administration refused an offer by the Taliban’s co-founder to take control of the security across all of Kabul before the chaotic evacuation because the president was determined to keep his promise to pull US troops out, according to a report.

Senior US military officials including Gen. Kenneth McKenzie hastily met face-to-face with Abdul Ghani Baradar, head of the Taliban’s military wing, who made the US a weighty offer, as reported by the Washington Post.  

‘We have a problem,’ Baradar said, according to a US official.  ‘We have two options to deal with it: You [the United States military] take responsibility for securing Kabul or you have to allow us to do it.’

But Biden was determined to keep his promise of a full withdrawal, even with the collapse of the Afghan government. So, McKenzie and other military officials said the US only needed control of the airport until Aug. 31 and the Taliban could secure the city.

So now we’re supposed to do diplomacy with the Islamic extremists in the Taliban? Everyone is now a hostage. Will this require pallets of cash? Removing sanctions? Teaching them how to use the $65 billion in military gear left behind? How do these people get out? How do you negotiate with these brutal extremists? There are 24 California students still stuck in Afghanistan.

And for those saying Biden’s surrender was a victory, that he “deserves credit, not blame

(UK Daily Mail) President Joe Biden wanted the now-departed Afghan president to create the ‘perception’ that his government was capable of holding off the Taliban – an indication he knew it was only a matter of time before the US ally fell to the Islamic group even while reassuring Americans at home that it would not happen.

In the last phone call between Biden and his Afghan then-counterpart Ashraf Ghani, the American president said they needed to change perceptions of the Taliban’s rapid advance ‘whether it is true or not,’ according to excerpts published on Tuesday.

The call took place on July 23 – weeks before the fall of Kabul – but Biden on Tuesday repeated his assertion that his team was caught flat-footed by the rapid Taliban takeover of the country.

Four weeks before Kabul collapsed, Ghani pleaded for more air support and money for soldiers who had not had a pay rise in a decade.

A transcript obtained by Reuters from an anonymous source reveals two leaders oblivious to the impending disaster and an American president focused on spinning the message.

‘I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,’ Biden said.

‘And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.’

Joe knew it was a disaster, but, was more focused on spin.

Read: White House To Afghan Who Helped Rescue Biden In 2008: “Thank You” And Psaki Deflections »

Surprise: Electric Vehicles Won’t Save You Money

The hell you say! Let’s consider that a Kia Niro hybrid starts at $24690. The EV version? $39090. That’s not an insignificant chunk of change. The VW ID4 starts at $39995. The Tiguan, about the same size, starts at $2545. Oh, and then there’s this little tidbit from Jolly Old England

Don’t kid yourself: electric cars won’t save you money

st greta carDoes anyone really believe that owning an electric car will end up saving them money? If you have fallen for the claims that lower running costs will more than make up for the higher purchase price of an electric car then you haven’t spotted something rather large that is barrelling down the middle of the road straight towards you: road pricing.

It would be easy to write off today’s report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change — which calls for road-pricing — as the work of a powerless and frustrated man trying to re-live his glory days as Prime Minister. Blair, you might just remember, attempted to lumber road-pricing upon us in the dying days of his premiership but was beaten back by public opposition. But he has a point. The switch to electric cars is going to cost the Treasury so much — £30 billion a year or the equivalent of six pence on income tax by 2040 according to Blair’s institute – that it is simply going to have to try to recoup that cost somehow. If it isn’t in the form of jacking up taxes on electricity – a political impossibility given that the government will be simultaneously trying to persuade us to dump our gas boilers for heat pumps – it is likely to come in the form of charging us for every mile we drive on the roads.

Yes, owners of electric cars currently pay less for their energy than do drivers of petrol and diesel cars, but it is not a fair comparison because it ignores the tax differential. For every pound you spend on petrol or diesel, around 60 pence goes to the Exchequer in tax. Charge your electric vehicle at home, on the other hand, and you pay just five percent VAT. Take into account that pure electric vehicles pay zero Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) and, according to the calculations by Blair’s institute, electric vehicle-owners pay just two percent of the motoring taxes paid by drivers of petrol and diesel cars.

Just wait, then, until the government tries to make up its losses. You won’t be so impressed with your electric vehicle then, not when the whole of Britain is peppered with London congestion charge-style levies. It is a precondition of road pricing schemes that all vehicles are monitored constantly. We will have to be followed around, either through an enhanced network of number plate recognition cameras or by GPS devices fixed in our cars. Every journey we make will logged and the data stored. Given how DVLA already co-operates with private parking companies by flogging them our home addresses, don’t be surprised if it assumes the right to start selling our mobility data to all kinds of marketing organisations who can then target us with ads tailored to which places we frequent.

Oh, but that’s England. They wouldn’t do something like that here, right? In fact, this has already been discussed as Surrender Joe and Gavin Newsome have pushed to replace all fossil fueled vehicles, even regular hybrids, with EVs. Think back to when Obama was raising the CAFE standards, and gas tax revenue was dropping (people like better fuel economy, in most cases), so they were talking about raising the gas taxes, at both the state and federal levels. And implementing “road pricing”, meaning charging you for how many miles you drove. Hybrid owners were incensed.  And this would have been on top of a gas tax.

But, at least it would have been simple, simply charging for miles driving. The Blair Institute goes further

It is suggested motorists could be charged a flat rate for every mile they travel, with each driver allowed a number of free miles per year.

But it warns that such a system would be unlikely to have much of an impact on congestion.

Another suggestion is to bring charges based on geography similar to London’s congestion zone or to apply a sliding scale of cost based on how long each journey takes.

The final proposal is to bring in a dynamic road user charging system, similar to one in Singapore, where higher costs are applied to the most congested routes at the busiest times of day.

So, figuring out ways to charge people forced into EVs they cannot afford no matter the situation. Think the Modern Socialists/Warmists in the U.S. aren’t paying attention?

And then there’s the notion of tracking you, because you can bet that what happens is not a simple sending of how many miles you drive to the government.

Read: Surprise: Electric Vehicles Won’t Save You Money »

If All You See…

…is a field that would be perfect for solar panels, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Blazing Cat Fur, with a post on the Woke targeting homosexuals.

Read: If All You See… »

A Woke College Group Is In Charge Of Our Foreign Policy

Mr. Chamberlain, I mean, Ned, is living in a delusional world. This is the kind of stuff you get from purple haired, no pit shaving, soy boy, Woke nutters at a college like Evergreen, people who live in an alternate universe. It’s beyond nuts that this is the way our State Department thinks. If the Taliban don’t do this, what will the Biden admin do? Robin Williams used to tell a joke about the unarmed British police yelling “stop! or I’ll yell stop again.”

Read: A Woke College Group Is In Charge Of Our Foreign Policy »

Taliban Celebrates As Surrender Joe Finishes The Afghanistan Retreat

Yes, it was long past time to leave Afghanistan. I was never a big fan of nation building. We should have gone in in scorched earth style, eradicating al Qaeda and the Taliban. But, nations do not do Total War anymore, not since WWII. Our allies wanted to nation build, as well. And not a whole lot has been accomplished since. But, it’s the way the U.S. pulled out, which upset our allies, as well. And made the Taliban very happy

‘This is a lesson for the world’: Taliban stand on Kabul airport runway as they brag about defeating the West and celebrate with fireworks after last US flight took off, leaving hundreds of citizens and allies behind

The West’s retreat from Afghanistan should serve as ‘a lesson for the world,’ the Taliban bragged today, as its fighters paraded at Kabul airport after the last American troops departed on Monday night.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the group’s chief spokesman, addressed the media from the tarmac this morning – posing in front of Taliban ‘special forces’ units wielding American-made rifles and US military gear, who had seized control of the airstrip just hours earlier. Elsewhere, Taliban fighters posed with captured aircraft, helicopters, and vehicles.

‘Congratulations to Afghanistan… this victory belongs to us all,’ Mujahid said, calling the day a ‘big lesson for other invaders and for our future generation.’ ‘It is an historical day and an historical moment. We are proud of these moments, that we liberated our country from a great power,’ he added.

Overnight, fireworks and celebratory gunfire had lit up the night sky over the Afghan capital after it emerged the last US evacuation flight had departed, putting an end to America’s longest war.

But hundreds of American and British citizens were left behind, along with thousands of Afghans who helped western troops on a promise of sanctuary that was ultimately broken. Many now fear for their lives.

Mujahid insisted today that Taliban security forces will be ‘pleasant and nice’ to those left behind, despite reports already emerging of summary executions and persecution against women reminiscent of the Taliban of old.

Meanwhile at Bagram air base, the former stronghold of western forces, its new Taliban commander was boasting of having ‘beaten’ America using little more than Kalashnikov rifles while saying the airfield will now be ‘a base for jihad for all Muslims’.

Oh, good, so more Islamist terrorism. And how do the U.S. intelligence agencies handle this? Well, consider that the Biden Admin basically abandoned all those who worked with the U.S. and the allies, and, do you think anyone will be interested in helping the U.S. out in the future?

The photos of all the material left behind are unbelievable. Biden basically just turned a bunch of Islamic extremists into a powerful army. If they can learn to use the material.

We had to leave at some point, I suppose. Despite still having a military presence in Italy, Germany, and Japan. Joe just did it exactly in the worst way, and now jihadis have a training base again, along with a lot of material. I wonder how much explosive they now now have? We can blame all terrorists attacks on Biden now, right?

Read: Taliban Celebrates As Surrender Joe Finishes The Afghanistan Retreat »

Big Oil Wants You To Worry About Your Carbon Footprint Or Something

Why, yes, the Credentialed Media, dupes of the Cult of Climastrology, are going full bore cultist with the same old talking points about Hurricane Ida, but, nah, I just don’t feel like spending time doing that same old thing. More importantly, people shouldn’t worry about their carbon footprints!

Worrying About Your Carbon Footprint Is Exactly What Big Oil Wants You to Do

Everybody’s going carbon neutral these days, from the big boys — Amazon, Microsoft, Unilever, Starbucks, JetBlue — to your favorite outdoor brand, even ski resorts. Probably your neighborhood coffee roaster, too.

Yeah, all those brands are pretending to Do Something, sucking in the weak minded climate cultists.

What’s not to like? Becoming carbon neutral means cutting greenhouse gas emissions as much as you can, then offsetting what you can’t avoid with measures like tree planting. Seems admirable.

Well, not exactly. Carbon neutrality doesn’t achieve any sort of systemic change. A coal-powered business could be entirely carbon neutral as long it stops some landfill gas in Malaysia from entering the atmosphere equal to the emissions it’s still releasing. American fossil fuel dependence would remain intact, and planet-warming emissions would continue to rise. The only way to fix that is through politics, policymakers and legislation. But distressingly, most businesses don’t want to play in that arena.

Instead, they’re doing exactly what the fossil fuel industry wants: staying in their lane, accepting some blame for a global problem and maintaining the dominance of fossil fuels. They’re well intentioned, sure, but also clueless, even complicit.

If Big Oil is so Evil, why have so few Warmists given up their own use of fossil fuels? Has the NY Times, which published this op-ed, stopped using fossil fuels for their operations?

Imagine if businesses put as much effort into climate lobbying as climate neutrality. Corporations wield tremendous influence over the political system. But on climate, most corporations have decided to sit this one out. Notably, the five biggest tech corporations — Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon — spend only 4 percent of their lobbying dollars on climate, according to Influence Map.

Imagine if these corporations, which are typically called evil by Leftists because of their influence and for simply being Big Companies, minded their own damned business and didn’t try to get government to force compliance on other companies and citizens.

We need more of that approach — citizens, businesses and governments working together to address this crisis. It might result in policy solutions like government regulation, effective carbon taxes, national standards for renewable energy and electrification, the elimination of legacy subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, strict auto emission standards and new national building codes. All of these approaches threaten fossil fuel’s business model and, not coincidentally, would help to slow the warming of the planet.

In other words, force everyone to comply with the beliefs of a doomsday cult, beliefs that few act on on their own.

What do fossil fuel companies prefer? They like consumers and corporations to do anything and everything as long as they stay out of the companies’ way and avoid doing anything that could actually make a difference.

And most Americans are just fine with that, since fossil fuels are cheap, reliable, and readily available. You darned sure weren’t getting people out of New Orleans with electric vehicles, especially not when stuck in traffic.

Tragically, the overwhelming majority of American businesses are on a path of complicity. Their climate strategy avoids conflict and generates great P.R. Unfortunately, it also allows fossil fuel interests to monetize their remaining assets unhindered, ensuring catastrophe for all.

That’s because Doing Something is popular in theory, not practice. Including for most climate cultists. And what started out as making Excuses as to why Warmists shouldn’t make any changes in their own lives turned into Government force.

Read: Big Oil Wants You To Worry About Your Carbon Footprint Or Something »

Surrender Joe’s Department of Education Goes After 5 States For Banning Mask Mandates

Funny thing is, they don’t want to seem to take on Texas and Florida. I wonder why? Could it be that those states have a lot more pull, a lot more ability to defend themselves? Or, could it be that those governors will fight back very, very hard, and they could be candidates for president in 2024?

Biden Administration Launches Civil-Rights Probes against Five States over Mask-Mandate Bans

spite houseAfter President Biden gave the cue to Education Secretary Cardona, the Department of Education has launched civil-rights probes against five Republican-led states that banned mask mandates in public institutions.

“The Department has heard from parents from across the country – particularly parents of students with disabilities and with underlying medical conditions – about how state bans on universal indoor masking are putting their children at risk and preventing them from accessing in-person learning equally,” Cardona said in a press release.

OCR will investigate whether the states in question have violated Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which deal with discrimination.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) sent letters to education leaders in Oklahoma, South Carolina, Iowa, Tennessee, and Utah. The recipients did not include Florida or Texas, whose governors have been battling school districts in their states over mask requirements for weeks. However, the agency said it is “closely monitoring” the conduct of those states and is prepared to take action against them if warranted.

So, basically, the Sleepy Joe admin looked for any tiny little reason available, all in an attempt to force states to comply with what is a CDC suggestion, not anything allowed by law. Nothing that has been passed by law, because there is still a 10th Amendment, and the power to force kids to wear a mask is not specifically delegated to the federal government.

Does anyone think it’s rather ironic that this is a civil rights investigation to force children to wear a mask (which mostly doesn’t work)?

(KOKO) Gov. Kevin Stitt’s office had a direct suggestion for President Joe Biden and his administration after the U.S. Education Department announced its investigation into five states, including Oklahoma, with universal mask mandate bans in schools.

“Until every American citizen is safely out of Afghanistan, President Biden shouldn’t spend a single second harassing states like Oklahoma for protecting parents’ rights to make health decisions for their kids,” Carly Atchison, communications director for Stitt’s office, told KOCO 5 in an email.

There are still at least a couple hundred Americans left in Afghanistan, along with Afghanies who wanted to get out after working with the US and other nations, and a huge number of military working dogs, which Biden just left to be taken.

Oklahoma’s new law, Senate Bill 658, prevents school districts from issuing mask or COVID-19 vaccine mandates unless the governor issues a state of emergency. Some districts have defied the law by issuing mask mandates, while others have recommended that students and staff wear masks.

Unlike the federal government, Oklahoma passed a law. People can wear masks to their hearts content, but, schools, for one, cannot force kids to wear them. That’s up to them and their parents. Federal laws, heck, all laws, should be targeted and specific, not open to whatever interpretation they want that’s convenient for the political beliefs of those in office. Especially since Joe, Jen Psaki, and so many others in the Biden admin often fail to wear masks despite Joe’s executive order regarding wearing them while in federal buildings.

https://twitter.com/MatthewFoldi/status/1432436776342376450?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1432436776342376450%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.shorenewsnetwork.com%2F2021%2F08%2F30%2Fliz-cheney-spotted-maskless-violating-state-indoor-mask-mandate-at-wedding%2F

But, see, we have to force children to wear mostly useless mask while the Elites blow off the rules.

CDC: Unvaccinated, unmasked teacher caused community-wide outbreak in California

An unvaccinated elementary school teacher in California infected more than half of her students with COVID-19, ultimately resulting in a community-wide outbreak in Marin County, a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

Haven’t The People In Charge been telling us that masks stop us from getting COVID? Kids in California are required to wear masks. Shouldn’t the masks have stopped this? No? Huh.

Read: Surrender Joe’s Department of Education Goes After 5 States For Banning Mask Mandates »

Good News: California To Make Homes More Expensive With ‘Climate Change’ Requirement

Just too be clear, there will be no “Hurricane Ida is climate doom” stuff, not unless I run into something really egregious, really pure moonbat. I’ve seen this all before, as have you. There’s nothing new in their doomsday fearmongering, and we all expected the climate cultists to link/blame Ida on Other People driving fossil fueled vehicles and eating tasty burgers. That’s what cult members do. So, over to California, where even the NY Times notices what climate realists have been saying, namely that the policies cause prices to skyrocket

California’s Plan to Make New Buildings Greener Will Also Raise Costs

California has led the nation in fighting climate change by encouraging the use of renewable energy and electric cars. Now the state is taking on an even harder challenge — reducing emissions from homes, businesses and other buildings that have to be heated, cooled and powered.

This month, state regulators updated California’s building code to require new homes and commercial buildings to have solar panels and batteries and the wiring needed to switch from heaters that burn natural gas to heat pumps that run on electricity. Energy experts say it is one of the most sweeping single environmental updates to building codes ever attempted by a government agency.

But some energy and building experts warn that California may be taking on too much, too quickly and focusing on the wrong target — new buildings, rather than the much larger universe of existing structures. Their biggest fear is that these new requirements will drive up the state’s already high construction costs, putting new homes out of reach of middle- and lower-income families that cannot as easily afford the higher upfront costs of cleaner energy and heating equipment, which typically pays for itself over years through savings on monthly utility bills.

The median single-family home in California sells for more than $800,000 compared to about $360,000 nationwide, and businesses pay more for rent in cities like San Francisco and San Jose than anywhere else in the country. A big reason costs are higher in California is that the state is not building enough homes, something lawmakers tried to address last week by advancing legislation that would allow more than one home on each parcel of land.

Adding solar panels and a battery to a new home can raise its cost by $20,000 or more. While that might not matter to somebody buying a million-dollar property, it could be a burden on a family borrowing a few hundred thousand dollars to buy a home.

“You’re going to see the impact in office rents. You’re going to see it in the cost of the milk in your grocery store,” said Donald J. Ruthroff, a principal at Dahlin Group Architecture Planning in Pleasanton, Calif. “There’s no question this is going to impact prices across the board.”

Surprise? Of course, it might be nice to have solar in California due to the state’s problem with having enough power, leading to brownouts and blackouts, some of them planned. But, yeah, it is going to cost prices to rise for buildings, which will lead to cost of goods and services to rise. Even more than they already are.

Chris Ochoa, senior counsel for codes and regulatory and legislative affairs at the California Building Industry Association, said the builders support efforts to address climate change. But he believes more needs to be done to retrofit existing buildings with more energy-efficient systems, too. Otherwise, new homes, with more efficient and advanced systems, will become even less affordable to first-time buyers.

Next up, forcing retrofits on existing homes. Who’s going to pay for it?

OK, one bit of crazy from the Washington Post

Read More »

Read: Good News: California To Make Homes More Expensive With ‘Climate Change’ Requirement »

If All You See…

…is Extreme Weather from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is American Elephants, with a post on living in the golden age of stupidity.

Read: If All You See… »

Pirate's Cove