On January 3, 2023, America lost a hero and CFACT lost a friend. Colonel Walter Cunningham was 90.  "Walt" is best known for flying in space as lunar module pilot on Apollo VII, the first manned space mission after a tragic fire on the ground killed the crew of Apollo I.  Walt worked closely with CFACT and joined our delegations to COP 19, the UN climate conference in Warsaw, and COP 20 in Lima, Peru. 

Flashback: Apollo Astronaut Cunningham Slams UN for perpetrating the ‘one of the biggest frauds in the field of science’

CNN: Last surviving Apollo 7 astronaut has died

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Marc Morano Statement: "The world has lost a great man. Walt was a hero of space, science, and life. I got the opportunity to travel globally with Walt to Europe and South America and be at his side at UN climate debates. Walt was also featured in Climate Hustle 1 & 2. Walt loved his country, loved science and could not sit quietly while the UN bastardized climate science for political power. My prayers go out to his family and friends."

Paul Ehrlich's failed predictions from the video: "We'll never be 7 billion people in the year 2000." 

Ehrlich's spectacular failed predictions from 1970s: "As you know, we're already cooling the planet. If the weather changes, which now seems to be entrained in the United States of the wrong kind, our corn production may go on a great deal of our wheat production and we may be hungry very, very fast because we do not have that large as reserve supply in the United States.

More flashback doomsday rhetoric: "That disaster will take the form of famine, plague or war. Every person you add to the planet increases the chances of a thermonuclear war. Everybody in this room may die 20 years young, simply because we're using hard pesticides. We're close to famine in the United States we're very close to a worldwide plague that could kill virtually everybody. Sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come and by the end, I mean an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity. Every person you add to the planet dramatically increases the chances of having a worldwide plague which could kill almost everyone. These growth rates are preposterous they cannot be sustained." 

Michael Shellenberger: To its credit, CBS notes how wrong Ehrlich has been over the years. “The alarm Erlich sounded in 1968 warned that overpopulation would trigger widespread famine,” noted CBS News’ Scott Pelley. “He was wrong about that. The Green Revolution fed the world.” But Pelley goes on to claim that Ehrlich is right about humans causing a “sixth mass extinction.” He’s not. He’s wrong about that, too.

Erin Fitz-Henry, who teaches anthropology and “development studies” at the University of Melbourne, writes in The Conversation that the notion of climate change being “racist” actually isn’t new; the medical journal The Lancet noted that as of 2015, the countries of the “Global North” accounted for 92 percent of “excess” CO2 emissions. ... “[M]ost rich white countries, including Australia, are doing precious little to properly address this inequity,” Fitz-Henry writes. “For the most part, they refuse to accept the climate debt they owe to poorer countries and communities […] this injustice – a type of ‘atmospheric colonisation’ – is a form of deeply entrenched colonial racism that arguably represents the most pressing global equity issue of our time.”

Tendayi Achiume, who’s finishing up her tenure as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, told The Guardian that “green solutions […] are being implemented at the expense of racially and ethnically marginalised groups and Indigenous peoples.”

"The rush towards sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels, including electric cars and renewable energy, was creating what Achiume described as 'green sacrifice zones', where already marginalised groups were exposed to environmental harms from the extraction of the very minerals needed for green tech."

Peiser: "In Europe, we are degrading our own economies and degrading our nations, in the name of saving the planet without doing anything about CO2 emissions because we are just shifting them abroad, we're just exporting them. That is at the core of all these 27 COPs we've seen over the last 30 years. It's always the same outcome. The developing world, China, India, are not going to risk their own economies, the well-being of their people, their energy security, their national security. We're doing it and we're paying the price for it. And this is the biggest warning to Americans: If you want to avoid your energy bills going up fourfold, don't do what we are doing."

Fox News Channel - Tucker Carlson Tonight - Broadcast January 4, 2023

Morano: "These are the intended consequences of these policies...We ought to start naming energy blackouts after the politicians' who push these green policies."

"The United States has had electrical grids for over 100 years -- over a century,  we know how to provide power. There is no excuse for having energy shortages, blackouts, and high skyrocketing prices. The only excuse is politics, and a net zero Green New Deal climate agenda has crept into our policies. You have solar and wind being subsidized, and there's no penalty for their unreliability, their lack of battery storage, or the lack of energy they produce. They're treated equally, which then forces grids to incorporate them -- solar, and wind mandates -- into the grid, and then you end up with either shortages or, consequently, skyrocketing prices. We ought to start naming energy blackouts after the politicians' who push these green policies."

Eco-Terrorists suspected of vandalizing power stations, thousands without power

Morano on Joe Piscopo Show: But here's the here's the big -- the bigger picture. Yeah, this is kind of like the guy holding up at gunpoint and taking your wallet on the street. But the real terrorism to the grid isn't coming from the people attacking this grid. It's coming from people like [former California Governor] Arnold Schwarzenegger, who 15 years ago signed the 'historic' California climate legislation, which led to California facing blackouts and the highest electricity prices in the country.

The real terrorists to our grid are the Green New Deal proposals and the Inflation Reduction Act, and solar and wind mandates. There is no reason why any modern grid should have energy shortages. The only reason they have shortages is because of the green agenda that's infiltrated itself into our energy policy due to due to politics based on wacky ideological science. So we can be mad at these activists for actually torching and destroying the grid or going after SUVs. But the real culprit is green energy policies. 

Flashback: Greens Stump for a Treeless Christmas – Recommend ‘a storm-felled branch’ instead

Politico's E&E: Since Musk’s purchase of Twitter two months ago, some prominent climate deniers have returned to the platform after being banned for pushing misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic. There also are signs that scientists have left Twitter after their posts depicting global warming research were swarmed by critics. ... 

Marc Morano, who runs a blog that routinely attacks climate science, said that since Musk bought Twitter the appearance of his name in climate search results “appear to be juiced by the new algorithms.”  “My Twitter account and many others opposing the ‘consensus’ climate view have all increased visibility dramatically since Musk took over Twitter,” he said in an interview. “Whatever Musk is altering, I hope he keeps it up.” Indeed, the number of tweets rejecting climate science have never been higher than in 2022, according to research by the University of London conducted on behalf of The Times newspaper. There have been more than 850,000 climate denial tweets or retweets so far this year. There were 650,000 such messages in 2021 and 220,000 in 2020, the analysis found. ... 

Twitter appears to now boost the accounts of serial climate misinformers, including Steve Milloy, a former Trump EPA transition official; Patrick Moore, former head of the CO2 Coalition; and Morano, who runs a climate denial blog. In recent Twitter searches, their accounts appeared in top results with climate scientists, media outlets and NOAA.

Marc Morano, another former Inhofe staffer, has dedicated his career to denying climate change as founder and executive director of Climate Depot. Morano, the Climate Depot executive director, said that Inhofe “helped me immensely to understand how to oppose bad ideas in Washington, and he aided me in launching my climate opposition career,” said Morano.

“He attracted high-level talented staff, and the proof of that is how his former staff members turned into a ‘Who’s Who’ of those running official Washington’s environmental policies many years later.”

 Time Mag Dec. 15, 2022: This corner of southwestern Arizona is one of the most wildlife-rich parts of the U.S., home to mountain lions, javelinas, black bears, and visiting jaguars and ocelots. All these animals roam back and forth across the U.S.-Mexico border to find food, water, and mates. ... .... As global warming alters conditions in animals’ existing habitats, scientists say the biggest mass migration of animals since the Ice Age is getting underway. It will often be blocked by human borders, thanks to a worldwide frenzy of wall-building over the last few decades. ... As global warming alters conditions in animals’ existing habitats, scientists say the biggest mass migration of animals since the Ice Age is getting underway. It will often be blocked by human borders, thanks to a worldwide frenzy of wall-building over the last few decades.

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Climate Depot's Morano comment: "But, Wait! Walls to stop illegal immigration are bad for the environment, but Demilitarized Zones acting as walls between nations are somehow act as wildfire sanctuaries?! Why does the corporate media praise the ecological benefits of the DMZ zone border between North & South Korea but issue dire warnings about any U.S. border?!"

Bloomberg News: This is only the beginning of what climate activists need to do in order to be effective, says Andreas Malm, associate professor of human ecology at Lund University and author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline. ... “The task for the climate movement is to make clear for people that building new pipelines, new gas terminals, opening new oil fields are acts of violence that need to be stopped — they kill people,” Malm says on Bloomberg Green’s Zero podcast. ... Malm: “We shouldn't engage in assassinations or terrorism, or use arms and things like that,” he says. “But until that line or boundary, we need virtually everything … all the way up to sabotage and property destruction.”

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The SEC is relying on foreign investors to present an illusion of broad support for the agency’s proposed climate disclosure rules.

Environmental fund targeted newspapers in swing districts, aimed to raise 'public mandate for climate action'

WaPo: "From Kenya to India and the Philippines, more frequent and intense extreme weather events have led to escalating threats against women and girls" - For these and many other women around the world, the threat of violence could become more common as climate change makes extreme weather events more intense and frequent. ... A 2021 study of extreme weather events in Kenya by researchers at St. Catherine University in Minnesota found the economic stresses caused by flooding and drought or extreme heat exacerbated violence against women in their homes. The research, which used satellite and national health survey data, showed that domestic violence rose by 60 percent in areas that experienced extreme weather. That analysis, and 40 others published this year as part of a global review in the journal The Lancet, found a rise in gender-based violence during or after extreme weather events. ... 

“Heat waves, floods, climate-induced disasters increase sexual harassment, mental and physical abuse, femicide, reduce economic and educational opportunity and increase the risk of trafficking due to forced migration,” said McGovern, who added that the data remains limited on some fronts, including on psychological and emotional violence and attacks against minority groups. ... ‘The violence peaks during the floods’ ... Scientists emphasize that extreme weather events do not cause domestic or gender-based violence, but instead exacerbate existing pressures or make it easier for perpetrators to carry out such violence.

Flashback 2005: Men Warm Globe, Women Feel the Heat, Group Claims – The solution?! ‘Climate gender justice’

Flashback; Aussie ‘Ambassador for Women’ claims ‘climate change’ causes rape! ‘Exacerbates the risks of sexual & gender-based violence’

Flashback: Identity politics invades the climate change debate

Activists built barricades and set them on fire while the police prepared for the planned eviction of the village Luetzerath. Activists threw fireworks, bottles and stones at police outside the village of Luetzerath before the situation calmed down and officers pulled back, German news agency dpa reported...The hamlet is to be demolished to expand the Garzweiler lignite mine, despite protests from environmentalists who fear millions more tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide will be released into the atmosphere.

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Even though global coal demand is set to increase only marginally this year, it is enough to push it to an all-time high, amidst the global energy crises, says the International Energy Agency (IEA). The IEA’s latest Coal 2022 report forecasts that the world’s coal consumption will remain at similar levels in the next few years in the absence of strong efforts to accelerate the transition to clean energy use. The use of coal around the world is set to rise by 1.2% in 2022, surpassing 8 billion tonnes in a single year for the first time. This would eclipse the previous record set in 2022, says the IEA.

China’s energy demand has skyrocketed in recent decades, and most of this has been met by coal...Though China’s coal use has increased in absolute terms, as a proportion of its energy mix, it has slightly diminished.

DAVID STROM: Power shortages, though, are a different beast. Shortages result from human failures, particularly a failure to plan for predictable increased need for power. Relying on intermittent power sources, insufficient backup, and failing to invest in reliability...The federal government has been pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure investments, but the goal has been to implement a “green new deal,” not to ensure that our electrical grid is optimally reliable for the end customers. This is malfeasance...At best, they don’t care whether it is reliable. At worst, they intend to produce shortages to constrain our mobility, shrink our living spaces, and even socialize the provision of heat and electricity...

People don’t choose poverty for themselves, but the power hungry often choose it for others. A vibrant middle class is difficult to manage. People living a life of drudgery less so...There are plenty of examples where countries have done it. Venezuela, Cuba, China in the 50s & 60s, the Soviet Union all chose to follow policies that made life worse for ideological reasons.

Global coal consumption will reach an all-time record by the end of 2022 as shortages of natural gas have driven up energy prices, forcing countries to burn more coal, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The nation’s carbon emissions went up by 7%, the highest percentage increase ever recorded, as the U.S. produced more than 4.9 billion metric tons of energy-related carbon dioxide in 2021, representing a 325 million metric ton increase from 2020, according to an EIA report...Following the coronavirus outbreak, carbon emissions produced by energy consumption fell by 547 million metric tons or 11% in 2020 compared to 2019 levels. The bulk (56%) of the rise in energy consumption came from the transportation industry which was heavily impacted by the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent economic recovery.

Total emissions in 2021 remained 243 million metric tons lower than they were in 2019 and 1.11 billion metric tons lower than 2007’s peak levels, the EIA found.