A 2018 study by the Danish Ministry of Environment and Food looked not just at plastic waste, but also at climate-change damage, ozone depletion, human toxicity and other indicators. It found you must reuse an organic cotton shopping bag 20,000 times before it will have less environmental damage than a plastic bag.
If we use the same shopping bag every single time we go to the store, twice every week, it will still take 191 years before the overall environmental effect of using the cotton bag is less than if we had just used plastic.
Even a simple paper bag requires 43 reuses to be better for the environment – far beyond the point at which the bag will be fit for the purpose.
The study clearly shows that a simple plastic bag, reused as a trash bag, has the smallest environmental impact of any of the choices.
-Bjørn Lomborg
Australians once enjoyed affordable power, reliably delivered: the chaotic delivery of wind and solar changed all that. Australian power prices have rocketed out-of-control: its wind and solar power capital, South Australia pays the highest electricity prices, in the world.
Mass power cuts (aka load shedding and demand management) and mass blackouts are the new normal.
-stopthesethings
Germany’s utopian dream of transforming itself into the world’s green powerhouse is collapsing as its political and media establishment is mugged by reality.
The country’s climate obsession has turned into one of the country’s biggest political and economic handicaps, making Germany almost ungovernable.
-Benny Peiser
Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Fascism, Regulation
Santa Barbara has become the latest city to crack down on plastic straws, enacting what is likely the most severe prohibition in the country. The law authorizes hefty fines and jail sentences for violators. On Tuesday, the Santa Barbara City Council unanimously passed a bill that prohibits restaurants, bars, and other food service businesses from handing out plastic straws to their customers...
The city also has made a second violation* of its straw prohibition both an administrative infraction carrying a $100 fine and a misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000 and up to six months in jail.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Narrative, Oops, Waste
An in-depth study found that, contrary to widespread belief, zero-emissions vehicles actually increase the amount of pollution that is emitted into the atmosphere.
The Manhattan Institute published “Short Circuit: The High Cost of Electric Vehicle Subsidies,” a report that analyzes the cost of electric automobiles and their effectiveness to clean the environment.
Jonathan Lesser, the president of Continental Economics and author of the study, which was published Tuesday, collected various data to estimate the overall impact of such vehicles... The findings: electric vehicles increase the amount of pollution into the atmosphere compared to new internal combustion vehicles...
“The appropriate comparison … isn’t the difference between an electric vehicle and an old gas-guzzler; it’s the difference between an electric car and a new gas car. And new internal combustion engines are really clean,” Lesser wrote Tuesday in a Politico article about his findings.
Environmentalist, Warming, Narrative
Hundreds of scientists told President Trump on Thursday to leave a United Nations climate agreement, arguing that carbon dioxide was "environmentally helpful" and not a "pollutant." Massachusetts Institute of Technology climate researcher Dr. Mark Lindzen led the group of 300 scientists who sent the letter to Trump on Thursday.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Oops, Regulation
The British government provided financial incentives to encourage a shift to diesel engines because laboratory tests suggested that would cut harmful emissions and combat climate change. Yet, it turned out that diesel cars emit on average five times as much emissions in real-world driving conditions as in the tests, according to a British Department for Transport study.
“No one at the time thought of the consequences of increased nitrogen dioxide emissions from diesel, and the policy of incentivizing diesel was so successful that an awful lot of people bought diesel cars,” said Anna Heslop, a lawyer at ClientEarth...
Greenhouse Gas Emissions: China Gets a Pass...
While the White House works to shut down U.S. energy production, our adversaries can emit at will. China’s emission-reduction target actually allows its emissions to increase until 2030.
In 2019 China emitted more greenhouse gasses than the rest of the developed world combined.
If everyone does all they promised -- and remember the track record ain't that good -- but if everyone does all they promised and do it all the way through the century, we'll reduce temperatures by end of the century by 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit.
You won't be able to measure it in a one hundred years. Yet the costs will be somewhere between $1 trillion and $2 trillion a year. Paying $100 trillion for no good is not a good deal.
-Bjorn Lomborg on UN Paris Climate Agreement
Environmentalist, Liberal, Incompetence, Financial, Oops, Energy, Waste
Electricity from new wind and solar power is 2.5 to five times more expensive than electricity from existing conventional power sources, according to a study published Tuesday by the free-market Institute for Energy Research (IER). IER’s study found that new solar and wind power are nearly five and 3.5 times more expensive, respectively, than electricity from existing nuclear reactors. IER also found green energy systems become more expensive and damaging to the power grid the more they’re used.
... there is always a well-known solution to every human problem: neat, plausible, and wrong.
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
So. "Global Warming" isn't as bad as they made it out to be...
There has been no word of apology, no sign of humility. Remarkably, they carry on preaching their diehard gospel.
With their habitual arrogance, they argue that the lower levels of global warming mean that we now have even more time to implement their radical policies.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Financial, Fraud, Un, Oops, Greed, Corruption, Regulation
The vast majority of carbon credits generated by Russia and Ukraine did not represent cuts in emissions, according to a new study. The authors say that offsets created under a UN scheme "significantly undermined" efforts to tackle climate change. The credits may have increased emissions by 600 million tonnes. In some projects, chemicals known to warm the climate were created and then destroyed to claim cash.
As a result of political horse trading at UN negotiations on climate change, countries like Russia and the Ukraine were allowed to create carbon credits from activities like curbing coal waste fires, or restricting gas emissions from petroleum production. Under the UN scheme, called Joint Implementation, they then were able to sell those credits to the European Union's carbon market. Companies bought the offsets rather than making their own more expensive, emissions cuts.
But this study, from the Stockholm Environment Institute, says the vast majority of Russian and Ukrainian credits were in fact, "hot air" - no actual emissions were reduced.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Incompetence, Oops, Academia, Regulation
However, between fall 2012 and spring 2013, when bottled water was banned, the per capita number of bottles shipped to campus increased significantly. Thus, the bottled water ban did not reduce the number of bottles entering the waste stream from the university campus, which was the ultimate goal of the ban. Furthermore, with the removal of bottled water, people in the university community increased their consumption of other, less healthy bottled beverages.
Renewables Not Ready for Prime Time...
If we can get one fact through the left’s head let’s try for this one: scientific innovation and discovery is not affected by your wishes. It happens when it happens. And right now, as far as renewables go, the science is not there.
Like most of the idiocy forced on society by lefty regulations, it doesn’t work as well and pollutes and destroys more than what it’s attempting to replace.
Environmentalist, Warming, Liberal, Oops, Energy
Electric cars are worse for the environment per mile than comparable gasoline-powered cars, according to a new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. This contradicts the common assumption that electric cars are cleaner... Although the typical assumption is that electric cars are cleaner than gasoline-fueled cars, the power for electric cars has to come from somewhere, and it's often from coal-fired power plants.
"Rather than simply accepting the assertion of environmental benefits from electric vehicle use, this paper conducts a rigorous comparison of the environmental consequences of gasoline and electric powered vehicles, specifically by quantifying the externalities (both greenhouse gases and local air pollution) generated by driving these vehicles," the authors write.
Unreliable Power...
Wind and solar, with state and federal subsidies, have pushed reliable thermal operators out of business or prevented new generation from being built as operators can’t make money off of the market.
This reduced the capacity margin—grids must have excess capacity to ensure stability.
Texas is now experiencing what California deals with on a regular basis—unreliable power.
Along with the shuttering of the state’s largest generating station came dreams of windmills, solar collectors, and other “clean and green” options that would soon be taking its place. Like many other states and nations, Vermont has assumed that passing laws mandating renewable energy quotas will solve the problem... But like most other players, the Green Mountain State is finding that those goals must be tempered and sometimes outright abandoned. -William Tucker
Democrat, Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Energy, Waste
The federal government spent more than $4.28 billion in stimulus money on green upgrades to public buildings — but today, it has no idea if those huge expenditures actually made the facilities any more energy efficient. “I don’t have the data to say that,” says Nick Goco, the General Services Administration’s deputy assistant inspector general for real-property audit... Though the Energy Policy Act requires federal buildings to track consumption of energy by the hour, some of the buildings receiving stimulus funds had their meters disconnected for two months or longer.
Installing Windmills
to Protect the Environment
Environmentalist, Hypocrisy, Incompetence, Oops
First, insects are drawn to the reflective light of the solar mirrors. That draws small, insect-eating birds, which in turn draw larger predatory birds. The rays of the mirrors' reflected light produces temperatures from 800 degrees to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Any animal caught in the intense glare of the mirror's rays may catch fire and plummet toward the ground, or spontaneously combust altogether.
Eagle chopped in half by wind turbine
Killing Eagles: Havorn Hakket Wind Farm
Eagle chopped in half by wind turbine - Knud PedersenDemocrat, Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Oops
The government’s hopeful predictions for ethanol have proven so inaccurate that scientists question whether it will ever achieve its central environmental goal: reducing greenhouse gases. That makes the hidden costs even more significant. “This is an ecological disaster,” said Craig Cox of the Environmental Working Group, a natural ally of the president that, like others, now finds itself at odds with the White House.
Democrat, Environmentalist, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Debt
Fisker Automotive -- the electric-car maker that was granted a half-billion-dollar federal loan and on Friday dismissed about 75 percent of its remaining workforce -- is purportedly facing a lawsuit from the same firm that sued the government-funded Solyndra company... Employees told the publication they were give no severance pay besides compensation for unused vacation days.
Electric Vehicles
Even if the electric car is driven for 90,000 miles and the owner stays away from coal-powered electricity, the car will cause just 24% less carbon-dioxide emission than its gas-powered cousin. This is a far cry from "zero emissions." -Bjorn Lomborg
Europe’s suicidal green energy policies are killing at least 40,000 people a year. That’s just the number estimated to have died in the winter of 2014 because they were unable to afford fuel bills driven artificially high by renewable energy tariffs. -James Delingpole
Environmentalist, Warming, Science, Narrative, Oops
Thousands of Britain’s wind turbines will create more greenhouse gases than they save, according to potentially devastating scientific research to be published later this year. The finding, which threatens the entire rationale of the onshore wind farm industry, will be made by Scottish government-funded researchers who devised the standard method used by developers to calculate “carbon payback time” for wind farms on peat soils.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Brilliance, Oops, Waste, Healthcare, Regulation, Pc
A reusable grocery bag left in a hotel bathroom caused an outbreak of norovirus-induced diarrhea and nausea that struck nine of 13 members of a girls' soccer team in October, Oregon researchers reported Wednesday. The outbreak also affected many family members after the team returned home. Norovirus is a common, easily spread virus that causes various forms of gastric distress. It is "the perfect human pathogen" because it is highly contagious, rapidly and prolifically spread, produces limited immunity and is only moderately virulent, which allows it to continue spreading, said Dr. Aron J. Hall of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in an editorial accompanying the report in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
2020 Covid-19 Pandemic
Reusable Bags Unsafe
Thank you for your understanding.
Democrat, Environmentalist, Liberal, Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Oops, Waste, Jobs
President Obama’s green jobs training program, which was part of his stimulus, has failed on most key jobs measures, according to a new internal audit that found it was training workers who already had jobs that didn’t need green energy skills, and was failing to place new enrollees in jobs once they finished the training... Only 38 percent of those who have completed training got jobs based on it, and only 16 percent kept jobs for at least six months — the key measure of success for the program. “Outcomes for participants were far less than originally proposed,” the auditors said.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Financial, Fraud, Oops
Rampant fraud within California's recycling redemption program is costing the state millions of dollars, as scammers drive trucks full of cans across the border from Nevada and Arizona to collect nickels on deposits that were never paid. California recyclers also are claiming redemptions for the same containers several times, or for containers that never existed, according to an investigation by the Los Angeles Times.
Coal-fired electricity generation climbed this year in the U.S. for the first time since the Obama administration, spurred by spiking natural gas prices, a setback for the Biden climate agenda and a sign that the president’s drilling crackdown may be backfiring.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration said Monday that electricity generated by coal-fired plants is expected to jump by 22% in 2021 over last year’s levels for the first year-over-year increase since 2014.
-Valerie Richardson
Environmentalist, Warming, Incompetence, Un, Oops
When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change, it established what seemed a sensible system... since 2005 the 19 plants receiving the waste gas payments have profited handsomely from an unlikely business: churning out more harmful coolant gas so they can be paid to destroy its waste byproduct. The high output keeps the prices of the coolant gas irresistibly low, discouraging air-conditioning companies from switching to less-damaging alternative gases. That means, critics say, that United Nations subsidies intended to improve the environment are instead creating their own damage. ... The United Nations and the European Union, through new rules and an outright ban, are trying to undo this unintended bonanza. But the lucrative incentive has become so entrenched that efforts to roll it back are proving tricky, even risky.
Liberal environmentel policies hit pay dirt...
By 2030, the eastern German town of Poedelwitz will likely be razed to get at the rich veins of coal beneath its half-timbered houses.
The reason: Chancellor Angela Merkel's effort to steer Germany toward greener energy, which has unexpectedly meant booming demand for dirty coal...
"This is unparalleled destruction of the environment," says Jens Hausner, a farmer who has seen 17 of his 20 hectares consumed by digging equipment that looks like something out of a Mad Max movie.
"There is a mighty big difference between good sound reasons and reasons that sound good."
Environmentalist, Government, Science
CFL bulbs contain many nasty toxic substances. You likely know of the mercury they contain already, but they also have things like lead (stabilizer in the plastic ballast housings), arsenic in the electronic parts, phenol in circuit boards, cyanide to process metals for parts, toxic phosphors, and the list goes on and on! They can't be tossed in the trash can, and have to be saved and recycled (expensive!) when they burn out. Incandescents are not only easily recycled, but can be discarded in the trash -- the glass and metals used are inert.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Narrative, Oops, Pc
# Have people and pets leave the room, and avoid the breakage area on the way out.
# Open a window or door to the outdoors and leave the room for 5-10 minutes.
# Shut off the central forced-air heating/air conditioning (H&AC) system, if you have one.
Environmentalist, Warming, Crime, Incompetence, Un
The reported killing of 23 Honduran farmers in a dispute with the owners of UN-accredited palm oil plantations has called into question the integrity of the EU's emission trading scheme (ETS), as carbon credits from the plantations remain on sale. In Brussels, Green MEP Bas Eickhout called the alleged human rights abuses "a disgrace", and told EurActiv he would be pushing the European Commission to bar carbon credits from the plantations from being traded under the ETS.
The green energy revolution around the world has turned into a big green meltdown, with many nations sprinting away from "renewable" energy with the speed of Usain Bolt... The European Union spent an estimated $750 billion on green-energy handouts over the past decade, and all it's bought them is a doubling of power costs. -Stephen Moore
Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Oops
Evergreen Solar Inc., the Massachusetts clean-energy company that received millions in state subsidies from the Patrick administration for an ill-fated Bay State factory, has filed for bankruptcy, listing $485.6 million in debt. The Massachusetts Republican Party called the Patrick administration’s $58 million financial aid package, which supported Evergreen’s $450 million factory, a waste of money.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Oops, Energy, Waste, Jobs
Last year, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced the city had won a coveted $20 million federal grant to invest in weatherization. But more than a year later, Seattle's numbers are lackluster. As of last week, only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Government, Funny, Crazy, Tolerance, Regulation
Bolivia is set to pass the world's first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country's rich mineral deposits as "blessings" and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.
Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Funny, Oops, Waste
San Francisco's big push for low-flow toilets has turned into a multimillion-dollar plumbing stink.
Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months.
In December 2011, a report to the European Commission described another branch of the UNFCCC’s carbon-reduction schemes, known as the Clean Development Mechanism,” as “costly, unpredictable, unreliable, prone to gaming,” and “counterproductive due to perverse incentives.” -George Russell
Editorial, Liberal, Oops
The Central Valley of California used to be the nation's breadbasket, producing enough food to not only feed much of the United States, but to export to the rest of the world. But that is no longer the case, thanks to environmental politics.
California Green Policies Plunge Minorities into Energy Poverty...
This surge in prices derives from the state’s obsession — shared by the ruling tech oligarchs — with renewable energy and the elimination of fossil fuels...
This is not bad news for the tech oligarchs, who have been prominent among those profiting from “clean energy” investments.
Black and Latino households are already forced to pay from 20 to 43% more of their household incomes on energy than white households. Last year, more than 4 million households in California (30% of the total) experienced energy poverty.
Environmentalist, Editorial, Liberal, Demagoguery, Energy
On the very northern cusp of ANWR is what is commonly called the coastal plain, a tract of flat tundra largely indistinguishable from other spots along the coast and throughout the region. This comprises about 8 percent of the refuge-but an even smaller fraction of its pretty scenery. Some of this area is already off-limits to oil exploration, permanently. Nonetheless, the U.S. Geological Survey — seconded by industry experts-believes there could be untold billions of barrels of oil in the swath still legally available. The oil industry says it would need to use only 2,000 acres-an area no bigger than Dulles Airport, outside D.C.-to get that oil.
Liberal
Angry residents accuse local authorities of contributing to bushfire toll by failing to let residents chop down trees and clear up bushland that posed a fire risk.
Environmentalist, Liberal, Oops
QUEENSLAND Police have been left red-faced over its choice of new "green" patrol cars.
The service boasts it is going green, taking delivery of 100 hybrid Toyota Camrys. Shame no one checked the boot size. Frontline officers say the boots of the new patrol cars are too small to carry all their essential equipment, including flak jackets and emergency equipment.
The policies being proposed to combat climate change, far from being a modest insurance policy, are proving ineffective, expensive, harmful to poor people and actually bad for the environment: we are tearing down rainforests to grow biofuels and ripping up peat bogs to install windmills that still need fossil-fuel back-up. -Matt Ridley
Environmentalist, Hypocrisy, Crime, Government, Science, Politics
Published in 1962, Silent Spring used manipulated data and wildly exaggerated claims (sound familiar?) to push for a worldwide ban on the pesticide known as DDT – which is, to this day, the most effective weapon against malarial mosquitoes. The Environmental Protection Agency held extensive hearings after the uproar produced by this book… and these hearings concluded that DDT should not be banned. A few months after the hearings ended, EPA administrator William Ruckleshaus over-ruled his own agency and banned DDT anyway, in what he later admitted was a “political” decision.
The Ethanol Boondogle
This year, the dead zone covered 5,800 square miles of sea floor, about the size of Connecticut. Larry McKinney, the executive director of the Harte Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, says the ethanol mandate worsened the dead zone.
Wind Power
For reasons still not clear to scientists, eagles are vulnerable to collisions with wind turbines, and in some areas such collisions can be a major source of the bird’s mortality.
Solar Power
Japan’s Environment Ministry issued a stark warning: the amount of solar panel waste Japan produces every year will rise from 10,000 to 800,000 tons by 2040, and the nation has no plan for safely disposing of it.
Hillary Clinton dismissed climate activists in withering terms during a meeting with labor unions last year, saying the environmentalists pressing her to renounce fossil fuels should "get a life," according to allegedly hacked emails released Friday by WikiLeaks. -Elana Schor