Utopia, you are standing in it!

You know policymakers have lost the plot when they start waxing lyrical about battery storage and ‘green’ hydrogen; neither of which exist at any scale; neither of which are even vaguely economic, even with massive taxpayer-funded subsidies to prop them up.

English dictionary doyen, Samuel Johnson reckoned that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, which might have been the case in 1775, but these days it’s waffle about storing wind and solar generated electricity at grid-scale, to account for total and totally predictable collapses in their daily output; aka sunset and calm weather.

While the scoundrel of today helps propagate the lie that the only thing standing between us and an all-wind and sun-powered future is a few giant Teslas, the reality back on Earth is altogether different, as this report from GB News testifies.

‘We are on the brink of disaster’ – Net Zero Watch says power from…

If you look at the long-run trends in labor markets, one of the most obvious changes is the decline in working hours. The chart from Our World in Data shows the long-run trend for some countries going back to 1870.

Hours of work declined in the US by 43% since 1870. In some countries like Germany, they fell a lot more (59%). But the decline was substantial across the board. One thing to notice in the chart above is that for the very recent years, the US is somewhat of an outlier in two ways. First, there hasn’t been much further decline after about the mid-20th century. Second, average hours of work in the US are quite a bit higher than many of developed countries (though similar to Australia).

But the labor market in the US (and in other countries) is in a very unusual spot at the present moment…

The last El Niño was 6-7 years ago, but elapsed time can’t on its own be a guarantee of one this year. Neutral ENSO conditions are another option. As usual an assertion about warming from greenhouse gases is thrown in, with no evidence to back it up.
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Climate models indicate La Niña is on the way out, with El Niño conditions expected later this year, claims Phys.org.

CSIRO Climate Scientist Dr. Wenju Cai explains what this means for Australia’s weather and how changing conditions will affect the country.

Is La Niña really on the way out? What do the climate models tell us?

We are in the mature season of the current three-consecutive La Niña years. During the three years, heat has been stored in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

I normally share humor about collectivism, gun control, politicians, and libertarians, but let’s augment my sparse collection of environment humor.

We’ll start with a video clip from the United Kingdom.

What makes the video amusing (and sad) is that it captures how politicians largely see global warming as an excuse to do things they have always wanted to do – i.e., grab more power and control.

Next, we have two examples of Greta humor, starting with this gas cap.

And this peek into the future.

Our fourth item shows how insufficient commitment to the environment can lead to personal loss.

As usual, I’ve saved the best for last.

Professor Glenn Reynolds (aka, Instapundit) famously has remarked that “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who keep telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.”

But as we repeatedly see, the people…

Baylen Linnekin writes at Reason Public Health Researchers Float Idea of Climate-Change Warnings on Menu Items.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Warning diners that red meat is bad for the environment is yet another attempt
to socially engineer food choices.

A study released last week suggests that fast-food menus that feature labels urging diners not to order red meat off those same menus due to the “climate impact” of those food items can help convince customers to swap out red meat for what the researchers argue are more climate-friendly foods—from fruits and vegetables to poultry and seafood. The study, published in Jama Network Open and led by researchers from Johns Hopkins University, concludes that “climate impact menu labels may be an effective strategy to promote more sustainable restaurant food choices and that labels highlighting high-climate impact items may be most effective.”

The study’s data comes…

Ruy Teixeira writes at his substack blog From Environmentalism to Climate Catastrophism: A Democratic Story (Part 1 of 3).  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Conservation, the Environmental Apocalypse, and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism

The beginnings of the environment as an issue can be traced to the conservation movement of the late 19th and early 20th century associated with figures like Gifford Pinchot, head of the Forest Service under Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club. They were Republicans but many Democrats also embraced the movement; Woodrow Wilson created the National Park Service in 1916. And the New Deal in the 1930’s had a prominent place for conservation activities, most famously in the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) where young men were employed to improve forests and national parks. Trail systems and lodges from that era are still widely used today.