Michigan AG Plans To Sue Fossil Fuels Companies

By William Teach May 9, 2024 – 3:00 pm

Perhaps the AG can explain who Michigan can survive without fossil fuels. All those automobiles produced. All the shipping across the Great Lakes. How will they clear all the snow?

Nessel plans to sue oil and gas companies over Michigan’s changing climate

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Thursday her intention to sue the fossil fuel industry for its role in changing Michigan’s climate and threatening the state’s environment, infrastructure, health and economy.

The oil and gas industry profited while knowingly selling products that cause climate change, Nessel’s office said in a document disclosing the coming lawsuits. The industry also deceived the public about climate change, Nessel alleged, leaving the state with the expenses of adapting to and recovering from the effects of warming.

“I don’t know that there’s a bigger issue facing the state of Michigan than climate change,” Nessel said in an interview with The Detroit News. “We are talking about billions and billions of dollars in damages and we’re already starting to see that on a day to day basis. We know this is only going to get worse.”

Well, crime is pretty big in many Michigan cities. How about fixing the water issues in Flint? Or dealing with the Islamic extremists in places like Dearborn?

“Big oil caused these problems and they ought to pay the expenses related to these damages,” Nessel told The News.

They wouldn’t have succeeded if people didn’t want to use them. A lot of people in Michigan depend on fossil fuels, especially heating gas, for those cold winters. They need them for all their boats. For all the tourists. Will Michigan be shutting down the airports? If fossil fuels are so bad, why did she allow so many to travel to Detroit for the NFL draft? Why did she travel to Detroit?

Anyhow, unfortunately the gas and oil companies won’t do things like refuse to sell their products to the state government, or get photos and video of the AG traveling around in fossil fueled vehicles and planes.

Read: Michigan AG Plans To Sue Fossil Fuels Companies »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 11 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach May 9, 2024 – 1:00 pm

…is a wonderful low carbon form of transportation, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Cold Fury, with a post on who the next civil war will be between

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 13 Comments | Trackback URL

Biden To Pitch Asylum Changes Or Something

By William Teach May 9, 2024 – 10:30 am

But, will he? Will it make any difference? And, if it actually worked, will he keep it if he wins in 2024, or just end it?

Biden administration set to pitch new asylum changes

spite houseThe Biden administration will propose new changes to the asylum system on Thursday, four people familiar with the matter told POLITICO.

The forthcoming changes will address the stage at which migrants can be found ineligible to apply for and receive asylum. Under the current system, eligibility is determined based on a number of factors during the interview stage — the administration is set to propose applying these standards during the initial screening stage.

That change would effectively allow the U.S. to expedite the removal of migrants whom officials see as potentially ineligible to stay in the country due to national security or public safety risks, per all four people, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly about the administration’s plans. The Department of Homeland Security will announce the new policy via a proposed rule on Thursday.

Whoa, hold up there. Why would we allow any illegal to remain at all if they are national security or public safety risks, even if claiming asylum? They aren’t “potentially ineligible”, they are are ineligible, per the law as it stands. This is what multiple laws state, including the absurd asylum law.

And by expedite, how long? It should be immediate, but, seeing what Biden has done these last 3+ years, it won’t be immediate. They’ll probably be let go with a promise to return for their hearing years from now. So, unless this new rule includes too-sweet deportation, it means nothing.

The announcement is not slated to include several sweeping changes to migration policy that Biden administration officials have weighed, such as using a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act to bar migrants from seeking asylum in between ports of entry. Those larger-scale changes are not expected to get proposed until June at the earliest, according to the four people.

The biggest and best change, forcing people to apply outside the U.S. and wait for the determination, will be used just ahead of the Democratic National Convention as a way to attract voters, but, never implemented.

Thursday’s announcement likely won’t spur the kind of blowback from the left that an asylum ban would bring. But some immigration advocates are concerned about the implementation challenges the administration will face on the proposed rule. Already, credible fear screenings take asylum officers a few hours to complete. The new policy would further extend the process, putting more pressure on asylum officers who are already facing record demands.

There are also concerns about whether migrants, who will have little time to seek counsel before the preliminary screening, would get effective or proper legal representation under the proposed rule.

Ship the illegals to the areas where these “immigration advocates” live: see how they like having criminals near them. Of course, this is all window dressing. Biden won’t actually do anything, this is optics before an election, and, it’s weird that Biden has said for a year and a half that there was nothing he could do. This is all to settle down the Democrats in the areas like Chicago, NYC, Boston, Denver, and others who have received huge numbers of illegals.

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Good Grief: We’re Apparently To Take Advice From Beyonce On Global Boiling And Housing

By William Teach May 9, 2024 – 7:15 am

Hey, remember when we were not supposed to listen to people who aren’t climate scientists?

Fannie Mae CEO: Beyoncé is right. Climate change has already hit the housing market—and homeowners aren’t prepared

Two names you’d never expect to hear together: Beyoncé and Fannie Mae. But in her song “YA YA” on her new album, “Cowboy Carter,” she sounds an alarm that’s growing louder in communities across America. “Wildfire burnt his house down/Insurance ain’t gonna pay no Fannie Mae.”

We appreciate that Beyoncé raised this issue. For the record, Fannie Mae would help this man. While we don’t make home loans or collect payments (we buy and back mortgages), we do offer payment relief and other help if disaster strikes our homeowners.

However, Beyoncé has a point: An estimated one in 13 U.S. households are uninsured and two-thirds are underinsured. This means that millions of families have limited or no protection against growing climate-related risks, such as wildfires and other disasters.

For housing, climate change is a today problem. Each year since 2021, the U.S. has averaged 22 natural disasters with damage exceeding $1 billion. Last year brought 28. In the 1980s, the average was three per year. Forecasters already project this year’s Atlantic hurricane season will be “extremely active,” with the most storms since 1995.

So, we’re supposed to listen to a woman with no college degree, who has her own massive carbon footprint. The average American’s is 16 tons per year. Beyonce/JayZ had 9.5 million pounds from their 144 fossil fueled flights in 2023 alone. This doesn’t cover all the concerts, fossil fueled vehicles, mansions, and so forth.

That 2023 had more natural disasters exceeding $1 billion is just one event, especially when property, housing, and buildings are way more expensive. Now, if this happens year after year after year it would create a track record. But, it still cannot prove anthropogenic causation. Just that the world has warmed. And the last person we need to listen to is a pop star who didn’t even write the lyrics who was virtue signaling then flies back to her mansion.

Read: Good Grief: We’re Apparently To Take Advice From Beyonce On Global Boiling And Housing »

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Surprise: UNRWA Caught Stealing And Selling Humanitarian Aid For Gazans

By William Teach May 9, 2024 – 7:00 am

We already know that United Nations Relief and Works Agency employees are linked to Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups. And Gazans are already having issues with Hamas stealing aid meant for Gazans, who mostly support Hamas, so, oh well. Now

From the link

UNRWA has been caught stealing and then selling humanitarian aid that came into Gaza that was intended to be given to Palestinian civilians, UN Watch reported on Wednesday, citing reports published by Palestinians in “an UNRWA-related chatroom.”

The Watch report also claims that those who report UNRWA‘s actions with the humanitarian aid “face reprisals.”

According to the report, Palestinians claimed that staff working for the UN agency “have their homes full of aid.” Additionally, a UNRWA warehouse chief sold 50 cartons of food for $5,000.

Items such as pampers, canned sweets, and tissues were sold at a UNRWA school door. This comes amid statement by UNRWA Commissioner-General Phillipe Lazzarini, who was quoted in the UN Watch report saying “there is more food available… it still does not mean that the food is accessible” as he was calling countries to increase direct cash assistance to Gazans.

UN Watch documents this extensively, check the link, which also notes plenty of anti-Semitism among UNRWA employees. None of this should be a surprise, because there is a long history of UN agencies being problematic, to put it mildly. There was the massive oil for food fraud involving Iraq and the UN. Peacekeepers assaulting and raping women in 3rd world nations. Theft of aid in those 3rd world nations. And so much more. Oh, and

(I24) The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Shin Bet security agency announced on Sunday that it had conducted a strike on the command and control center belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization located within the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) compound in the central region of the Gaza Strip.

The IDF spokesperson stated that the strike was a response to recent terrorist activities directed towards IDF forces and humanitarian aid efforts.

Hmm, why was Hamas, a US State department, United Nations, and European Union designated terrorist organization, allowed to operate in a UNRWA building?

Read: Surprise: UNRWA Caught Stealing And Selling Humanitarian Aid For Gazans »

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Californians Mad Over Power Bills From Law They Voted For

By William Teach May 8, 2024 – 3:00 pm

It’s truly lovely when support for climate cult legislation rears up and bites the cultists square in the derriere, eh?

Anger builds over sweeping change in the way most Californians will pay for electricity

With little debate two years ago, state lawmakers passed a complex energy bill that enabled a sweeping change in how most Californians are billed for electricity.

The legislation was what Pacific Gas & Electric had asked for from the state public utilities commission three months before: a transformation of electric rates so that households would pay a fixed charge each month in exchange for lower rates for each kilowatt hour they used.

Gov. Gavin Newsom submitted the bill as part of a massive 2022 budget revision. In four days, it was passed out of an Assembly committee hearing without discussion, approved by the full Assembly and Senate and signed by Newsom.

The state’s three largest investor-owned power companies that pushed for the change say it will encourage Californians to ditch cars and appliances that run on planet-warming fossil fuels and replace them with vehicles, stoves and heaters that operate on electricity from solar panels and wind turbines. They also say the new monthly fee would allow them to more evenly allocate fixed costs among customers.

The majority of citizens of the People’s Republik Of California voted for the people who quickly passed this, and, at the time, most Californians thought the legislation was the bee’s knees. They thought they would get the hook up on cheap energy bills in a state that is one of the highest in the nation. They were warned that this was a Bad Idea

But opponents say the legislation was a financial gift to PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, and will cause millions of Californians who live in small homes or apartments that use little electricity to pay more, while residents in large homes that use a lot of electricity will save money.

Gee, ya think?

Now, as governor-appointed members of the California Public Utilities Commission prepare to approve a $24 monthly charge at a May 9 meeting, some lawmakers who voted for the original legislation are trying to reverse it. A coalition of more than 250 environmental and community groups are also protesting the law, claiming that its approval smacks of an all too cozy relationship between utility companies, regulators and think tank researchers.

Opponents complain that the new law eliminates a $10 cap on fixed charges that had been in place since 2013, and that there is now nothing to prevent the utilities from raising it higher and higher.

Consequences are not fun, eh? The little Warmists thought everything would be lollipops and unicorns, even with the evidence in front of their faces.

Of course, the LA Times, politicians, climate cult groups, and others are trying to blame PGE, who are not blameless, but, the politicians aren’t taking the blame, and this couldn’t happen without their votes. Nor could it happen without the votes from the citizens who voted for the Democratic Party politicians.

The next day, AB 205 and 28 other trailer bills addressing issues ranging from cannabis regulation to reproductive rights, were presented at a hearing of the Assembly Budget Committee.

According to a transcript, the committee’s leaders limited public discussion to one hour. The fixed electric charge was not mentioned.

Why would the elites want to hear from the little people? The politicians simply know better, so, shut up, plebes.

Read: Californians Mad Over Power Bills From Law They Voted For »

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Gaza Isn’t The Root Of Brandon’s Troubles With Youts, But, It Sure Isn’t Helping

By William Teach May 8, 2024 – 1:00 pm

I’m not sure if this NY Times article is supposed to help Biden or just be an explainer. You know the Times isn’t going to try and hurt him (paywalled NYT article here)

Gaza Isn’t Root of Biden’s Struggles With Young Voters, Polls Show

Young Americans’ outrage over the Israel-Hamas war has dominated the political conversation for weeks. Democratic and Republican lawmakers have made pilgrimages to Columbia University and other campuses to offer support to demonstrations in solidarity with the Gaza Strip or to denounce them, and President Joe Biden addressed the upheavals in remarks Thursday.

But these headlines are not reflective of young voters’ top concerns this election year, according to recent polls. Surveys taken in recent months show young voters are more likely to sympathize with Palestinians in the conflict, but few of them rank the Israel-Hamas war among their top issues in the 2024 election. Like other voters, young people often put economic concerns at the top of the list.

And while young voters are cooler to Biden than they were at the same point in 2020, there is little evidence that American support for the Israeli invasion of Gaza is a critical factor in their relative discontent. (snip)

The latest polling from the Pew Research Center finds 18- to 29-year-olds three times more likely to sympathize with Palestinians in the conflict than those older than 65, and twice as likely as adults as a whole.

“Not necessarily everyone is as fired up about it as we see from those out protesting,” said Laura Silver, the associate director of global research for Pew. “But 18- to 29-year-olds are far and away different from older Americans.”

They’ve been taught to be haters of Israel and Jews and to support Islamic extremists, all without actually knowing the details of the situation.

Recent polls suggest these sympathies have yet to translate into prioritizing the war as a voting issue in 2024.

In the Harvard Institute of Politics’ Youth Poll conducted shortly before the past month’s wave of campus demonstrations and crackdowns, 18- to 29-year-old Americans overwhelmingly faulted Biden for his handling of the conflict in Gaza, with 76% disapproving and 18% approving. But only 2% of them rated it their top concern in the election, compared with 27% who said they were most concerned about economic issues.

In an Economist/YouGov poll taken more recently, in late April, 22% of voters ages 18 to 29 listed inflation as their most important issue. Two percent named foreign policy as their top concern. (The poll did not specifically ask about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.)

The youts have learned by experience that Biden’s economic policies are not particularly good for their own lives. Gaza is just some ideal that they’re cosplaying, seeing the cost of living skyrocket while the Biden admin makes it worse personal.

That said, Gaza is not helping with all those youts who are cosplaying as revolutionaries, then going home to their family’s mansion and having someone do their laundry before going out to a fancy party. These are the people who mostly do not understand the issues, just talking points. If Trump was smart he really would focus his campaign on economics, minimize all the other stuff he usually yammers about.

Read: Gaza Isn’t The Root Of Brandon’s Troubles With Youts, But, It Sure Isn’t Helping »

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If All You See…

By William Teach May 8, 2024 – 1:00 pm

…is an evil fossil fueled vehicle, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Climate Depot, with a post on a GOP bill that tells Biden to keep his hands off American’s appliances passing the House

Read: If All You See… »

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Vermont Passes Law Requiring Fossil Fuel Companies To Pay For Climate Doom

By William Teach May 8, 2024 – 7:00 am

I mentioned back in early April that Vermont was looking to do this. Now, they have. And more

Vermont passes bill to charge fossil fuel companies for damage from climate change

Vermont lawmakers passed a bill this week that is designed to make big fossil fuel companies pay for damage from weather disasters fueled by climate change.

The legislation is modeled after the Environmental Protection Agency’s superfund program, which requires the companies responsible for environmental contamination to either clean sites up themselves or reimburse the government for the costs of work to do so.

Vermont’s bill, referred to as its Climate Superfund Act, would similarly mandate that big oil companies and others with high emissions pay for damage caused by global warming.

The amounts owed would be determined based on calculations of the degree to which climate change contributed to extreme weather in Vermont, and how much money those weather disasters cost the state. From there, companies’ shares of the total would depend on how many metric tons of carbon dioxide each released into the atmosphere from 2000 to 2019.

Even if Vermont’s Republican governor vetoes it, there are enough votes to override. Notice that they are not just going after fossil fuels companies, but, any company with “high emissions.” They really haven’t determined which ones yet, though, so, what will companies who think they might get bills from the government do? That’s right, leave, taking their jobs and revenue with them.

What happens if the fossil fuels companies decide to leave? How does the government itself operate without fossil fuels? How do many heat their homes? Get to work? Operate their boats? Do visitors want to deal with high costs, or, just go elsewhere? How do truck bring goods in if there are no gas stations? How do planes get fuels? And, even if the companies stick around, they’ll just pass the higher costs on to consumers.

The bill hinges on the ability to assess how much damage in Vermont has been caused by climate change — an accounting that would rely on a line of research known as attribution science. Over the last 20 years, researchers have honed their ability to confidently model the degree to which human influence has contributed to the severity and frequency of extreme weather.

So, junk science.

State Sen. Russ Ingalls, a Republican, said he cast one of the three “nay” votes because he anticipates the law would trigger major litigation and thinks the money the state would have to spend in those legal battles could be put to better use.

“A decision was made to go to war with corporations that probably have as many attorneys as we do citizens,” he said. “We will be squashed like a bug.”

The American Petroleum Institute, one of the major lobbies for the interests of oil and natural gas companies, sent a letter to the state Senate opposing the bill, saying it “violates equal protection and due process rights by holding companies responsible for the actions of society at large.”

Lawsuits will be coming hard and fast. And, if the fossil fuels companies had any cajones, they would refuse to operate in Vermont until the lawsuits are resolved. Or, at least refusing to provide their goods to the state government.

Read: Vermont Passes Law Requiring Fossil Fuel Companies To Pay For Climate Doom »

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Biden Regime Thinks A Permanent Cease Fire Is Close Or Something

By William Teach May 8, 2024 – 6:45 am

You know how they can close the gaps? Hamas immediately releases all hostages and surrenders

US believes Israel, Hamas can close gaps on hostage deal

Israel and Hamas militants should be able to close the remaining gaps in their positions in order to reach a ceasefire-for-hostages deal in Gaza, the White House said on Tuesday.

“We believe that these gaps can be closed,” John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, told reporters as negotiators began gathering in Cairo for a fresh round of discussions.

Kirby said the Palestinian militant group Hamas had offered amendments on Monday to an original Israeli proposal aimed at ending the impasse.

The deal text, as amended, suggests the remaining gaps can “absolutely be closed,” he said.

Israeli forces’ seizure of the main border crossing between Egypt and southern Gaza raised fears that Israel might be beginning a much-feared incursion into Rafah.

The ceasefire as being proposed by Hamas as helped by the Biden regime is a 100% win for Hamas. It is essentially a permanent ceasefire which would allow Hamas to reconstitute and gain weapons, with Israel moving all forces out of Gaza. And Hamas essentially gives up nothing. Hamas basically just wins. Many of the hostages were killed. Hamas gets to stay in power. And they will then repeat another Oct 7 since they learned their strategy of hiding behind civilians works. Thus sending a message to terror orgs throughout the world that this will work for them too. So nobody but terrorists win.

Hamas tore up the previous proposal. There are no “gaps” between the two, this is the Grand Canyon.

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