Some "Climate" Humor For The Week

As you undoubtedly know, saving the planet from the scourge of climate change is the official religious cult of the progressive left. The planet (and all of our souls) shall be saved by eliminating the use of the evil fossil fuels, and replacing those with perfectly clean and free renewable energy from the sun and wind. The problem here is that we keep running into what I like to call the “Big Disconnect.” The Big Disconnect comes about because the sun and wind don’t work very much at all, aren’t available when you need them, cost way too much, and don’t provide the wealthy and powerful with sufficient opportunities to puff up their egos by showing off their wealth and power. Result: lots of good hilarity. Here’s a roundup from the past week or so. You get to vote on which is the funniest.

The Google Climate Summit

This one comes courtesy of Rex Murphy of Canada’s National Post on August 2. It seems that last week Google held a “climate summit,” or something like that, outside Palermo in Sicily. There were about 300 attendees. This being a top-level Google conference, the attendees were not nobody. It was a who’s who of the wealthiest and most powerful people who have sought to make themselves high priests and priestesses of the climate cult; people like Woody Harrelson, Diane von Furstenberg, David Geffen, Chris Martin, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sacha Baron Cohen, Orlando Bloom, Katy Perry, Prince Harry, etc., etc., etc. And how did they get to this exotic location? From Murphy:

How did this coven of illuminati get to Sicily? . . . Official count of the private jets wafting into Palermo air for the “great consult” stands at 114. This for a maximum 300 people attending — three persons per jet.

{But] not all came from the carbon-rich sky. Some came by personal super-yacht. Eric Smidt, CEO of something called Harbor Freight Tools, came on a 69-metre luxury barge Intrepid (US$150 million); a New Zealand tycoon cleaved the Mediterranean on Andromeda ($US165 million); and David Geffen floated in on Rising Sun ($US400 million). . . .

China

The next entry is from Paul Homewood of the Not A Lot Of People Know That blog on August 8. Homewood starts with a lengthy, breathless quote from something called Carbon Brief, supposedly reporting that China’s carbon emissions are about to “peak” well ahead of schedule, and then begin their big decline. Excerpt:

[I]n new analysis published in Nature Sustainability, a team of researchers has shown that as China’s burgeoning cities become wealthier, their per capita emissions begin to drop. According to their analysis, this trend could in turn trigger an overall dip in CO2 levels across the nation, and mean that despite the current target for emissions peaking by 2030, they may in fact level out at some point between 2021 and 2025…..

That’s what they want you to think. But what’s going on down there on the ground? Homewood quotes from a Reuters piece from August 6:

China coal mine approvals surge despite climate pledges. . . . Long-term cuts in coal consumption are a key part of China’s energy, environment and climate goals, but the fivefold increase in new mine approvals in the first-half of 2019 suggests China’s targets still provide ample room for shorter-term growth.  China’s energy regulator gave the go-ahead to build 141 million tonnes of new annual coal production capacity from January to June, compared to 25 million tonnes over the whole of last year, Reuters analysis of approval documents showed.

Just as we suspected.

Germany

Do you think that Germany is rapidly building wind turbines to replace the dirty and obsolete fossil fuel power plants? Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation sends in an entry from Germany’s Die Welt newspaper of July 26. In fact, Germany’s expansion of wind energy capacity has just about ground to a halt during the first half of 2019:

The expansion of wind power in the first half of this year collapsed to its lowest level since the introduction of the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) in 2000. All in all, just 35 wind turbines were build with an output of 231 megawatts. “This corresponds to a decline of 82 percent compared to the already weak period of the previous year”, according to the German Wind Energy Association (BWE) in Berlin. “This makes one nearly speechless,” said Matthias Zelinger at the presentation of the data. The managing director of the Power Systems division of the German Engineering Federation (VDMA) spoke of a “blow to the guts of the energy turnaround”. This actual development doesn’t match “at all to the current climate protection debate”.

But what’s the problem here? I thought that Germany as a nation was absolutely committed to saving the planet through expansion of the clean and free wind energy. Die Welt has identified the big problem:

The most important cause lies in the legal resistance of wildlife and forest conservationists fighting new wind farms. The BWE President referred to an industry survey of the onshore wind agency. According to its findings, more than 70 percent of the legal objections are based on species conservation, especially the threat to endangered bird species and bats. . . . In addition to species protection, it is primarily conflicts with noise protection that are leading to legal objections against wind power projects. They are responsible for 17 per cent of legal cases. Monument protection are behind six percent of lawsuits.

Of course, it is environmentalists who are opposed to saving the planet. But you already knew that.

Australia

And finally, from Australia — the craziest climate land of all — we have an entry from Joanne Nova on August 8. You are undoubtedly aware that a key element of saving the planet consists of promoting so-called “zero emissions vehicles,” otherwise known as electric cars. California, for example, makes the promotion of ZEVs a focus of its “climate” efforts. Obviously, we’ll never save the planet as long as cars burn gasoline and spew their carbon emissions right into the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, sales of ZEVs in Australia have been hampered by large and completely uninhabited grid-free areas where, it goes without saying, there are no charging stations. An example of such a large area is what they call the Nullabor, between Adelaide and Perth, a distance of about 2000 empty miles. Even the longest range ZEVs need multiple charges to get across this stretch.

What’s the answer? A guy named John Edwards has just come up with the perfect solution, which he calls the ChargePod. Here is a picture:

Yes, it is a transportable electric charge station attached to a diesel generator.

From Edwards:

To close the gap from Clare in SA to Perth in WA, 14 stations approx 200 km apart are needed to create a highway eVs can use. Until the highway is created the eVs crossing will remain at less than 10 per year.. a number that governments, businesses and investors can not get excited about. So in my humble view the way to get 14 stations in place to create a highway – is to assemble 14 ChargePods and stick them out there.

And thus the planet will be saved!

Cast your vote on which entry is the funniest.