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Duggan Flanakin
Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas.
Reports from France are that in the first week of rioting, 5,600 cars were burned – taking them off the road. Now, aside from political and societal disruption, the carbon pollution from the burning of these vehicles hardly compares with, say, a volcanic eruption or a giant forest fire. But just think: That’s 5,600 sources of carbon pollution gone!
Statisticians tell us electrifying America’s buildings (eliminating gas-, oil-, and coal-fired boilers entirely) “would be like taking 65 million cars off road”. So, getting rid of cars is good – right?
Susan Rakov, chair of Environment America Research and Policy Center’s clean energy program, admitted she was just fine with her gas stove – until it failed. But shouldn’t a true environmentalist have always had an induction stove? They have been around since the 1970s.
Susan first enrolled in Harvard in 1979 – some 44 years ago. She began working as a community organizer for MassPIRG in 1984 – a true, committed greenie. She likely bought her first house decades ago – long after induction stoves had become available. Only now does she gurgle, “It sure is different – and I love it. It boils water faster than my old gas stove.”
And then Susan’s pitch. “It doesn’t release dangerous air pollutants into my home when we’re cooking, and I no longer have to worry about escaping methane from the stove contributing to global warming.” But surely, as an advocate, she has known this for decades. So why did she wait so long?
It is gratifying to know that Susan can boil water – but “cooking with gas” cannot be replicated with any electric stove. The flame is the name of the game. You can’t even make Bananas Foster without a flame.
Every lit cigarette, joint, bong, candle, and, yes, campfire involves flames. Even electric fireplaces simulate flames – because you feel the heat and it smells good!
But we are not just talking about smoke. Ahead of the Fourth of July weekend, on just one day (June 28), over 1,200 flights were canceled, and another 5,600 were delayed.
Again, good news for the planet! Airplanes account for up to 3.5 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions – far more than gas stoves. And global CO2 emissions from international air travel more than doubled from 1990 to 2017. So, 1,200 flights canceled help the environment, we are told.
There is an exception, though, as John Kerry once so clearly explained. For guys like him and his fellow Davos billionaires, a private jet is “the only choice for somebody like me”.
The Smithsonian informs us that there are 56 active volcanic eruptions worldwide, including six that began this year. The most powerful was an underwater volcano in the South Pacific. The Hunga Tonga – Hunga Ha’apai submarine volcano sent ash into the third layer of Earth’s atmosphere – 36 miles high, higher than even from any on-ground volcanic eruption. It sent enough water to fill 60,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools into the atmosphere that scientists say “could warm our atmosphere in the future”. [Add in El Niño, and that future seems now!]
Now another study has revealed that at least 2,600 lightning bolts per minute were detected during peak volcanic activity – from that one volcano – nearly 200,000 lightning flashes over the 11-hour eruption, with some occurring as high as 19 miles above sea level.
Speaking of volcanoes, Antarctica is home to the largest volcano range on Earth, with 138 identified and many likely yet undiscovered. Two currently active volcanos are a significant reason for melting ice in the Ross Sea.
Lest anyone forget, the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens in Washington State took 1,300 feet off the top of the volcano, destroyed over 230 square miles of forest in a three-minute period, and sent 540 million tons of ash into the atmosphere up to 15 miles into the air.
The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo was even more powerful, sending 20 million metric tons of sulfur dioxide up to 20 miles into the stratosphere. This and other volcanic eruptions have caused declines in Earth’s surface temperatures of up to 0.5 deg F for up to three years.
While the Biden Administration is reportedly considering blocking the sun to slow global warming, we have no reports of federal efforts to stop volcanoes from belching smoke and ash into the atmosphere.
While hardly an ordinary occurrence, scientists now speculate that a comet that slammed into Earth 56 million years ago “may have triggered” global warming. The comet, we are told, jump-started the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, during which time CO2 levels rose to 1,000 parts per million (2.5 times current levels), and Antarctica became a lush tropical region.
Buried in the article is the NASA datum that global temperatures in 2016 had risen only 1.4 deg F (0.83 deg C) since 1880. To be sure, the jet-setting climate alarmists will tell you the sky is falling, or rather, the oceans are rising and will soon drown entire nations.
Take the alarmism that “the Marshall Islands could be wiped out by climate change” by 2035. Scary, eh? But in the real world, we learn that hundreds of atolls in the Pacific nations of the Marshall Islands and Kiribati, as well as the Maldives archipelago in the Indian Ocean, have grown up to eight per cent in size over the past six decades despite sea level rise.
According to the BBC, the world’s wealthiest one per cent produce double the combined CO2 emissions of the poorest 50 per cent, and the richest five per cent are responsible for 37 per cent of emissions growth between 1990 and 2015. The BBC also reports that global warming has likely contributed to the GDP per capita of several rich nations that are among the largest emitters of greenhouse gases.
It is quite the paradox that the wealthiest who are pouring billions (mostly taxpayer dollars) into imposing restrictions on the masses in the name of climate change are also making bank as they continue to “pollute”. Al Gore, who popularized climate fear 33 years ago with his book Earth in the Balance, has enriched himself by $300 million through that advocacy.
Is there any wonder that climate activists seek to suppress research findings that contradict their dire predictions or point out flaws in their beloved, disaster-predicting computer models? Is there any wonder why we can easily see there is a two-tier structure on sacrificing our freedoms and our prosperity in the name of climate change?
They get richer; we get poorer, and all the while, they claim the virtue seat for forcing us – not them – to change their lifestyles.
We get to quibble over the climate impact of giving up gas stoves, auto and air travel, and even eating meat while the climate elites party like it’s 1999.
Just take a gander at this video from the 2012 party held during the world conference of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil – a lavish affair replete with rich food, champagne, and even a fashion show as they demand economic contraction from everyone but them.
And you can bet that Al Gore and his chums at Davos are not dining on insects as they rake in the cash from scaring the bejeezus out of our children and gullible adults.
