RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
September 10 to September 16, 2023 In RealClearInvestigations, John Murawski offers a comprehensive, one-stop report on the suppressed views of top dissenting experts who say climate advocacy has devolved into mass hysteria and is pushing entire societies pell-mell into radical transformations without informed or reasoned deliberation. The dissenters say it is a troubling sign for scientific integrity that they are systematically sidelined and diminished by government funding agencies, academic journals, and much of the media. Among the arguments, from the likes of prominent skeptics Judith Curry, Bjørn Lomborg, Roger Pielke Jr. and two Nobel physics laureates: There is no climate crisis or existential threat as expressed by activists in the media and academia. Global temperatures are increasing incrementally, and have been for centuries, but the degree of human influence is uncertain or negligible. It’s unrealistic, they say, to force societies to rely on intermittent energy from wind and solar, or wager the future on experimental technologies. Killing fossil fuels will erase millions of jobs and raise energy costs, leading to economic depression and political instability. Despite the media refrain, there is no evidence that a gradually warming planet is affecting the frequency or intensity of hurricanes or other extreme weather. Climate science has been hijacked by activists, creating a culture of self-censorship enforced by a code of silence comparable to the Mafia’s omerta. Slogans such as the “scientific consensus” are misleading and disingenuous. The warming planet is a complicated phenomenon. Some climate skeptics say CO2 is not a pollutant but “plant food.” In RealClearInvestigations, James Varney reports that the Biden administration is tilting at the truth not only about the land required for windmills but for solar panels, transmission lines, charging stations, and much else when it comes the physical expanses needed for its "net zero" energy transformation: The official line: The vast array of solar panels and wind turbines required for “100% clean electricity” by 2035 will require “less than one-half of one percent of the contiguous U.S. land area.” But that's not true. Even the Energy Department’s report making that claim says the wind footprint alone could be nine times as large: 134,000 square miles. Even that figure is misleading because it omits land for new transmission systems to connect solar and wind to businesses and homes. Then there are the vehicle-charging stations nationwide, mines to extract rare earth minerals for batteries, vast spaces for windmill and panel maintenance etc. In addition, all projections increase substantially if the U.S. enlists as intended in a global plan dubbed “NetZero 2050.” A go-to academic for green advocates says land for solar could encompass “the size of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined” and wind farms the size of “Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.” Probably the biggest tall story: wind turbines. The Biden numbers account for just the physical space required for each turbine – only the stake in the ground. In RealClearInvestigations, Steve Miller gives a national overview of once-grassroots resistance to the “zero carbon” economy coalescing in varied new state laws and local ordinances that threaten to bog down solar and wind projects in a multi-front legal and regulatory war on a scale not seen before. Until recently, squabbles pitted loosely organized local residents against renewable developers. Now elected officials are increasingly joining the fray, with new laws and regulations auguring ever-varying multi-dimensional contests at the federal, state, and local levels to gain approvals, often involving international players. New laws in Ohio and Kansas give stronger input to towns and villages that are often the target of well-heeled power companies seeking to exploit rural land for big renewable energy projects. Michigan Citizens for the Protection of Farmland plans a ballot proposal that would ban large-scale solar farms on agriculturally zoned land across the state, combating a strong renewable lobby in the Democrat-controlled state. In Maine, lawmakers heeded the formidable fishing lobby and passed a ban on wind farms in state waters off the coast. In the crucial early primary state of Iowa, opponents are pursuing legislation halting solar plants on land suitable for agriculture within 150 feet of a neighboring property. Lawmakers in 12 states, including Republican strongholds Florida and Iowa, have passed measures that limit or remove local control of renewable projects, handing more authority to the state. In response, renewable advocates have supported federal intervention ranging from overriding state laws to loosening endangered and threatened species protections. Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books Chicago Homeless Get Only 15% of $52M, RCI
HUD Disaster Funds Vulnerable to Fraud, RCI
Pop Stars Went Platinum With COVID Aid, RCI
Maui Burned Despite $10M Relief Fund, RCI
Railroad Retirement Train Wreck, RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway Biden Impeach Inquiry's On: An Influence-Peddling Timeline, U.S. House Oversight
Europe Wrecks Biden's Claim of Corrupt Ukraine Prosecutor, New York Post
The Large, Costly Staff Jack Smith Has Built to Convict Trump, Washington Post
Trump Asks Judge to Recuse Herself from J6 Case, Daily Caller
Repost: Trump's Jan. 6 Judge Is Pot Calling Defendant Incendiary, RCI
Whistleblower: CIA Paid Rewards to Foil Lab Leak Theory, Daily Caller
Notes Bolster IRS Whistleblower's Disputed Claim, Politico Other Noteworthy Articles and Series As RealClearInvestigations first reported in 2018, nothing reflects the deeply illiberal ideology that has overtaken college campuses better than the “diversity statement,” which require job applicants to state their fealty to diversity, equity and inclusion. This New York Times article reports that nearly half the large universities in America now require job applicants to write such statements, part of the rapid growth in DEI programs. Many University of California departments also require faculty members seeking promotions and tenure to write such statements. But, pushback is growing: Seven states, including North Dakota and Florida, have made requiring diversity statements illegal, according to a tracker by The Chronicle of Higher Education. And dissenting faculty members have filed several lawsuits. With the help of the libertarian Pacific Legal Foundation, John D. Haltigan, who has a Ph.D. in psychology, filed a lawsuit in May against the University of California that said such a statement is a “functional loyalty oath” and would make his job application futile, violating his rights under the First Amendment. A growing number of people on the U.S. Terrorist Watchlist were encountered at U.S. borders in 2023, this article reports: Approximately 160 non-U.S. citizens on the watchlist attempted to cross into the United States in 2023, “most of whom were encountered attempting to illegally enter between ports of entry,” the Department of Homeland Security said in its annual Homeland Threat Assessment. That is an increase from 2022, when border officials encountered roughly 100 individuals on the watchlist attempting to enter the country. The article provides no details on who these people are or the threat they may have posed. It does suggest that the border is a tightly run ship: A Homeland Security official told reporters on Thursday that every individual encountered at the border faces biometric and biographic screening and vetting. Additionally, the official noted, Customs and Border Protection has expanded information-sharing agreements with international partners “to enhance their ability to prevent, detect, and investigate trafficking and other crimes.” But separately Fox News reports that the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog “has found that officials at the besieged southern border often failed to accurately obtain the addresses of tens of thousands of the migrants it released into the United States – finding that at least 177,000 migrants have been released after giving either an invalid or illegitimate address, or not giving one at all, to Border Patrol agents.” Prosecutors across the country are using drunk driving and “drug-induced homicide” laws against a new target: parents who expose their children to deadly opioids: [P]rosecutors in at least three [California] counties are turning to drunk driving laws to charge parents whose children die from fentanyl overdose. It’s a unique approach that will soon be tested in court as the cases head to trial. Supporters of the ramped-up enforcement say that by now those who use the synthetic opioid know the lethality of the drug and, like drunk drivers, they should know the consequences of exposing their children to their actions. … Authorities believe some of the children have died after touching something with the powdery substance and then touching their eyes or mouth. In one case, the drug may have been on the hands of a parent who prepared a baby’s bottle. The drug is not absorbed into the skin but experts say it can be lethal if as little as 2 milligrams, about the weight of a mosquito, enters the body. The article reports that “critics say the parents didn’t intend to kill their children but instead made poor choices because of their addictions and are being further punished instead of being offered help.” As the U.S. announced this week that it will swap prisoners and allow Iran access to $6 billion in frozen funds for releasing Americans detained by that country, this article reports that Russia is interested in striking its own deal for the release of two Americans it is holding on disputed charges: U.S. Marine veteran Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. They key player is the Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov, who is imprisoned in Germany for murdering a so-called enemy of the Russian state in that country in 2019: A top Western official involved in hostage diplomacy with Russia said Putin was interested in trading only for Krasikov. Putin has sought the return of agents arrested during other clandestine operations abroad. In 2004, he thanked the Emir of Qatar for returning two men convicted there of planting a car bomb that killed a fugitive Chechen rebel leader. Russia denied responsibility for the killing. Officials in several countries said a multilateral deal to swap Russian detainees in Western countries for Western citizens held in Russia, as well as imprisoned dissidents such as Alexei Navalny, was possible. President Biden said in July that he was serious about pursuing a prisoner exchange for Gershkovich with the Kremlin but gave no details. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm set out on a four-day electric-vehicle road trip this summer from Charlotte, N.C., to Memphis, Tenn., to draw attention to the billions of dollars the White House is pouring into green energy and clean cars. Instead, this article reports, it resulted in an episode involving the police while highlighting problems surrounding the administration’s EV push – especially the entitlement of some government officials as they planned to power up at a fast-charge spot in Georgia: Her [Granholm’s] advance team realized there weren't going to be enough plugs to go around. One of the station's four chargers was broken, and others were occupied. So an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle by one of those working chargers to reserve a spot for the approaching secretary of energy. That did not go down well: a regular gas-powered car blocking the only free spot for a charger? In fact, a family that was boxed out – on a sweltering day, with a baby in the vehicle – was so upset they decided to get the authorities involved: They called the police. | 