NY Times Notices That All These Companies Proclaiming They’re Doing Something On ‘Climate Change’ Mostly Aren’t

Seriously, most companies who climavirtue signal don’t actually do much in practice, because it’s expensive and idiotic. It doesn’t cost that much to patronize climate cultists, right? Well, the NY Times digs behind the scenes, forgetting to mention what the NY Times corporation is actually doing themselves with their big old building. Will they move ahead with only getting their power from solar and wind? How about doing away with the use of fossil fuels to gather and deliver the news?

What’s Really Behind Corporate Promises on Climate Change?

surprise surprise surpriseFor the past several years, BlackRock, the giant investment firm, has cast itself as a champion of the transition to clean energy.

Last month, Laurence D. Fink, BlackRock’s chief executive, wrote that the coronavirus pandemic had “driven us to confront the global threat of climate change more forcefully,” and the company said it wants businesses it invests in to remove as much carbon dioxide from the environment as they emit by 2050 at the latest.

But crucial details were missing from that widely read pledge, including what proportion of the companies BlackRock invests in will be zero-emission businesses in 2050. Setting such a goal and earlier targets would demonstrate the seriousness of the company’s commitment and could force all sorts of industries to step up their efforts. On Saturday, in response to questions from The New York Times, a BlackRock spokesman said for the first time that the company’s “ambition” was to have “net zero emissions across our entire assets under management by 2050.”

As the biggest companies strive to trumpet their environmental activism, the need to match words with deeds is becoming increasingly important.

Household names like Costco and Netflix have not provided emissions reduction targets despite saying they want to reduce their impact on climate change. Others, like the agricultural giant Cargill and the clothing company Levi Strauss, have made commitments but have struggled to cut emissions. Technology companies like Google and Microsoft, which run power-hungry data centers, have slashed emissions, but even they are finding that the technology often doesn’t yet exist to carry out their “moonshot” objectives.

“You can look at a company’s website and see their sustainability report and it will look great,” said Alberto Carrillo Pineda, a founder of Science Based Targets, a global initiative to assess corporate plans to reduce emissions. “But then when you look at what is behind it, you’ll see there is not a lot of substance behind those commitments or the commitments are not comprehensive enough.”

I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you! This is like most cities and countries: lots of talk, little action. The majority of Paris Climate idiocy signers aren’t doing much of anything. Most companies, the same. Like the NY Times company.

President Biden is also placing a big emphasis on climate change and has rejoined the Paris agreement. But determining how hard companies are really trying can be very difficult when there are no regulatory standards that require uniform disclosures of important information like emissions.

“Regulatory standards.” I wonder if the Times realizes this would affect themselves? And who’s shocked that the notion of even more Big Government is being mentioned? It’s a long piece, let’s skip to the end

“If we are going to achieve a net-zero carbon economy for real, we will need everyone to act,” said Lucas Joppa, Microsoft’s chief environmental officer. “And that means action can’t be voluntary. We need requirements and standards that everyone is expected to meet.”

Why can’t it be? If you believe, do all the things required, like doing away with the use of fossil fuels and operate only on renewables. Simple. Nope, because this is about forcing everyone to be in the Cult of Climastrology, whether they want to or not.

Read: NY Times Notices That All These Companies Proclaiming They’re Doing Something On ‘Climate Change’ Mostly Aren’t »

China Joe Opens His First Illegal Alien Child Concentration Camp

Because Democrats want unfettered illegal immigration, the set the conditions where foreigners send their kids willy nilly across the border. Sometimes with the parents themselves, sometimes with other relatives, sometimes with coyotes, sometimes alone. That way there’s sympathy for bringing/keeping the parents in the US. Both Obama, who didn’t take any real heat on it, and Trump, who took lots of heat, including what Obama deserved, had to put the kids somewhere. Now that Biden is finding the same, well, the media coverage is just a bit different

First migrant facility for children opens under Biden

Dozens of migrant teens boarded vans Monday for the trip down a dusty road to a former man camp for oil field workers here, the first migrant child facility opened under the Biden administration.

The emergency facility — a vestige of the Trump administration that was open for only a month in summer 2019 — is being reactivated to hold up to 700 children ages 13 to 17.

Government officials say the camp is needed because facilities for migrant children have had to cut capacity by nearly half because of the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border has been inching up, with January reporting the highest total — more than 5,700 apprehensions — for that month in recent years.

But immigration lawyers and advocates question why the Biden administration would choose to reopen a Trump-era facility that was the source of protests and controversy. From the “tent city” in Tornillo, Tex., to a sprawling for-profit facility in Homestead, Fla., emergency shelters have been criticized by advocates for immigrants, lawyers and human rights activists over their conditions, cost and lack of transparency in their operations.

Criticized is putting it mildly. He was blasted. Which the Washington Post is not doing. Also, not migrants. Migrants come legally on work visas. These kids are crossing the border in violation of U.S. federal law.

Mark Weber — a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that oversees services for migrant children — said the Biden administration is moving away from the “law-enforcement focused” approach of the Trump administration to one in which child welfare is more centric.

At the 66-acre site, groups of beige trailers encircle a giant white dining tent, a soccer field and a basketball court. There is a bright blue hospital tent with white bunk beds inside. A legal services trailer has the Spanish word “Bienvenidos,” or welcome, on a banner on its roof. There are trailers for classrooms, a barber shop, a hair salon. The facility has its own ambulances and firetrucks, as well as its own water supply.

The operation is based on a federal emergency management system, Weber said. The trailers are labeled with names such as Alpha, Charlie and Echo. Staff members wear matching black-and-white T-shirts displaying their roles: disaster case manager, incident support, emergency management.

Are they holding them in detainment facilities? Yes? Then they are cages. Concentration camps. Just like under Trump, as started by Obama. And taxpayers are funding the extra extravagance, rather than seeing the children deported with their parents/right back to their parents.

“Every kid that comes into this program is a symptom of a broken immigration system,” said Weber, who has worked at HHS since 2012. “So today, we’ve got over 7,000 symptoms of a broken immigration system.”

The only thing broken is the government refusing to fully implement federal immigration law, which requires them to stop people coming across the border and deporting them when they make it across. Let’s not forget that many of the illegals, including the children, are simply showing up at the border and demanding to be let in for various reasons, and U.S. authorities letting them in and sticking them in facilities. Democrats are enabling people sending their kids on long trips, not knowing what will happen to the kids.

“When I read they were opening again, I cried,” said Rosey Abuabara, a San Antonio community activist who was arrested for protesting outside the Carrizo camp in 2019. “I consoled myself with the fact that it was considered the Cadillac of [migrant child] centers, but I don’t have any hope that Biden is going to make it better.”

The Washington Post is having problems blasting China Joe for reopening facilities other than mild chiding. But, hey, Joe has nice signs!

Read: China Joe Opens His First Illegal Alien Child Concentration Camp »

Your Fault For Wiggly Jet Stream Causing Cold Weather Doom? Not So Fast

Usually, ARS Technica is chock full of climate crisis (scam) hysteria. This article actually shoots down the notion that it was you and your forebears who caused the doomy winter weather in Texas. Which is a shame that someone actually has point out that these climate cultists are nuts

Blaming a wiggly jet stream on climate change? Not so fast

Some songs are earworms—catchy whether you like them or not. (I won’t infect the rest of your day with an example. WT – I will. Electric Crown by Testament) Some explanations in science seem to be the earworm equivalent: inherently intuitive, making them stick readily in the mind. That’s obviously the case for the hypothesis that a warming Arctic leads to a wigglier jet stream, producing weather extremes in the mid-latitudes like the recent epic cold snap in the central US.

The cold arrived after the spinning “polar vortex” in the upper atmosphere above the Arctic was disturbed in January, unleashing its contents southward as the jet stream detoured from its usual commute. Could this behavior actually be a consequence of global warming? The suggestion has appeared in news articles and Twitter threads across the land. But the idea is stickier than the science says it should be. (snip)

Weather data from the last few decades contains some trends in the mid-latitudes, implying that the warming Arctic could be messing with weather patterns there. However, this is a case where the mantra “correlation is not causation” serves well. Climate scientists don’t just hunt for trends and then blame them all on human-caused climate change. They study the mechanisms that could drive those trends to evaluate which hypothesis (sometimes among many) can actually explain them.

Two points. First, I’ll acknowledge that a warming world could cause weather pattern changes and “freak” weather. We just don’t truly have the observed data from previous warm periods to truly know if this is usual or unusual. Second, the climate cult scientists and the cult disciples do, in fact, blame Other People for what is happening now, without real evidence. What if what we see is the norm during a Holocene warm period, but, mostly caused by nature? Unfortunately for the cult, that would cause problems with their cult dogma, just like having winter weather is problematic, hence the Blamestorming to make winter weather part of their beliefs set.

A 2017 study, for one example, concluded that trends in the stratospheric polar vortex were likely to be the result of natural variability rather than human-caused sea ice loss. And an article published in the journal Nature Climate Change last November noted that observations and studies in the last few years haven’t strengthened the case. “The short-term tendencies from the late 1980s through to early 2010s that fueled the initial speculation of Arctic influence have not continued over the past decade,” the authors wrote. “Long-term trends in the Arctic Oscillation and [jet stream] waviness, updated to winter 2019/20, are small and indistinguishable from internal variability.”

IPCC reports, too, have evaluated the state of the science on this question. The 2019 Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate checked in quite recently. “There is only low to medium confidence in the current nature of Arctic/mid-latitude weather linkages because conclusions of recent analyses are inconsistent,” the report stated. “Overall, changes in the stratospheric polar vortex and [Arctic Oscillation] are not separable from natural variability, and so cannot be attributed to greenhouse gas forced sea ice loss.”

Until the Warmists can offer up actual, hard evidence that winter weather can be worse because jet stream polar ice melting yada yada yada due to you eating a burger, it’s just natural variability. Just like always.

But, don’t expect the cult to give up on their doomsday cult dogma talking points. They never do. Space aliens could show up and give them definitive proof through watching the Earth and lots of planets and being super advanced that what is happening is mostly natural, and the cultists would call them deniers.

Read: Your Fault For Wiggly Jet Stream Causing Cold Weather Doom? Not So Fast »

If All You See…

…is an area being turned into a desert from climate change, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Last Tradition, with a post on being a raaaaacist.

Read: If All You See… »

Who’s Up For Wearing Masks In 2022?

These would be the masks that make a lot of people feel safer, but, don’t actually make a damned difference, if we’re looking at the the exposure and death numbers

Americans may still be wearing face masks in 2022, Fauci says

Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Sunday that he won’t rule out Americans still needing to wear masks in 2022 — even as the country returns to a certain degree of “normality.”

When asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether masks will be necessary next year, Fauci replied, “I think it is possible that that’s the case and, again, it really depends on what you mean by normality.”

The Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said he doesn’t know when the country will return to pre-pandemic life, but that he believes by the end of the year “we’re going to have a significant degree of normality beyond the terrible burden that all of us have been through over the last year.”

“As we get into the fall and the winter, by the end of the year, I agree with [President Joe Biden] completely that we will be approaching a degree of normality,” Fauci said.

“It may not be precisely the way that it was in November 2019, but it will be much better than what we’re doing right now.”

Right now there is a big debate over herd immunity

Johns Hopkins Doctor Thinks COVID Will Be Largely Gone By April, Half of U.S. Has Herd Immunity

Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon and a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health, believes that the coronavirus will be “mostly gone” by April.

In an op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal on Friday, Makary argued that half of the U.S. has already reached herd immunity because there are more coronavirus cases in the country, possibly 6.5 times as many, than the 28 million that have been reported.

Combined with the 15 percent of Americans who have already begun receiving the vaccine, the doctor argued that normal life will return by the spring.

But

The U.S. May Never Reach Full Herd Immunity Against Coronavirus, Former FDA Head Says

“I don’t really think we’re ever going to reach full herd immunity,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb told Margaret Brennan on CBS’ Face The Nation Sunday, when asked about vaccinating children, though he didn’t elaborate on why. “This isn’t going to be like measles or smallpox, which just sort of goes away. Covid is going to continue to circulate at a low level.”

While some want things to get back to normal, or as normal as can be, others continue to want to spread fear and keep restrictions going, the better to get people used to being dominated by government.

On Thursday, the seven-day rolling average for new coronavirus infections had fallen by a staggering 43% in just two weeks.

When it continues to decline, what are the political elites going to do?

Read: Who’s Up For Wearing Masks In 2022? »

Hundreds Of Snowmen In Utah Makes The Case For A Carbon Tax Or Something

Well, it looks like the cultists have finally moved on from saying what happened in Texas is the your fault for driving a fossil fueled vehicle. Most pieces now are just reprints of previous articles. But, hey, it’s still winter, so….

Hundreds of snowmen make a case in Utah for climate change

There wasn’t much snow in the Utah skies on Sunday, but hundreds of little snowmen made their way to the grounds at the state Capitol.

It was all part of a plea to save the “endangered species” — the snow.

The demonstration aims to encourage lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, state and local, to demand a price on carbon.

“The snow people claim carbon pricing is the fastest and most effective way to curb climate change,” said Nick Huey, of Taylorsville, who organized Sunday’s event.

He said more than 50 volunteers turned out to create at least 500 snowmen and snow women, using snow that was already on the property.

I’m wondering how these people got to the state Capitol: fossil fueled vehicles, perhaps?

“We need to do something about (climate change) … and it doesn’t have to be that we launch ourselves into the Dark Ages and never use our cars,” the 28-year-old father told the Deseret News. He said lawmakers should “set the rules and let the market respond with new innovations” that could lead to less pollution and cleaner air.

Some of the cleverly and quickly crafted snowmen held messages, including “Snowppl 4 carbn pricing,” and “Mister Mitt Romnee, if u price carbon we will vote 4 u 4 ever.”

Huey said putting a tax on carbon emissions is something both parties can get behind.

Oh, right, they want a carbon tax scheme to pay for their own Bad Behavior, knowing that the taxes would be on Other People, not themselves. If the scheme was actually left up to the market, the price would quickly drop to near zero, which is why most places that have carbon tax schemes see the government keep the price artificially high and continuously raise it.

Carbon pricing would essentially shift the burden of greenhouse gases to the corporations that play a part in creating it. Those companies also have the ability to slow or reduce their emissions.

See? On Other People. Never considering that companies will just pass the increase costs on to the consumers.

“It’s free market, small government and it’s incredibly effective,” he said, adding that it would allow the U.S. to meet the goals set by the Paris climate agreement without having to belong to it.

How is government implementing a tax on companies free market? These lunatics keep trying this talking point, and you’d have to be an idiot to buy into it. None of these schemes have done much anywhere they are in place, just more money into government coffers, and more government interference by government on business.

Read: Hundreds Of Snowmen In Utah Makes The Case For A Carbon Tax Or Something »

Hot Take: Excitable Ro Khanna Wants No Small Businesses That Can’t Afford $15 Minimum Wage

It’s always something with these nutters. On the bright side, Ro actually worked in the private sector for many years. Of course, that was mostly as a lawyer for other people’s firms along with teaching, so, he really has no idea what it takes to actually run a small business (video at the link)

Dem Rep. Khanna: ‘We Don’t Want’ Small Businesses That Can’t Afford $15 Minimum Wage

Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) declared Sunday on CNN’s “Inside Politics” that we should not want “low-wage businesses” when pressed on small businesses who would struggle under a federal mandate to pay employees $15 an hour.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 would cost 1.4 million Americans their jobs over the next four years.

Anchor Abby Phillip said, “I know that you feel very strongly like many progressives about the minimum wage issue. Right now, at the same time, businesses, both large and small, are struggling in this pandemic economy, more than 9 million jobs have been lost in the last year, and they still aren’t back, and the problem is particularly acute in industries like retail and foodservice, which are more likely to pay minimum wage. I think the question that a lot of Republicans are posing and perhaps some moderate Democrats is timing. Is now the right time to increase it to $15? I should say the bill has stages, of course, but immediately it would go up about 30% right now. Is now the right time to do that?”

Khanna said, “Abby, it’s absolutely the right time to give working Americans a raise. Let’s look at the facts. Amazon raised their wage to $15 nationally, not regionally. They have more jobs today. It didn’t hurt job creation or business. Target followed. They also did it nationally, more jobs.”

Well, it’s very easy to force Other People to spend more money, right? Perhaps all these yahoos should spend about a month watching what small business owners actually do, what they go through, what their operations look like, before they say “oh, it’s super easy to pay employees more.”

Phillip said, “Large businesses like Amazon and McDonald’s, for example, can and perhaps should pay more, but I’m wondering what is your plan for smaller businesses? How does this, in your view, affect mom and pop businesses who are just struggling to keep their doors open, keep workers on pate roll right now?”

And that right there is one of the problems: these Leftists do not understand that there is a vast difference between Amazon and McDonald’s. McDonald’s locations are franchised, so, essentially a small business, not a business with hundreds or thousands of employees. Someone put their money on the line. They took out the loan and put their heart, sweat, and tears on the line.

Khanna said, “Well, they should be doing it by paying people low wages. We don’t want low-wage businesses. Most successful small businesses can pay a fair wage. If you look at the minimum wage, it increased with worker productivity until 1968, and that relationship was severed. If workers were actually getting paid for the value they were creating, it would be up to $23. I love small businesses, I’m all for it, but I don’t want small businesses that are underpaying employees. It’s fair for people to be making what they’re producing. I think $15 is very reasonable in this country.”

What value are burger flippers creating? Or those who are working a register? Many are in commissionable positions, where they get paid somewhere between minimum wage and $15 an hour plus commissions/bonuses. You raise it to $15, and much of the commissions/bonuses go away and/or are reduced. In other areas, they can either raise prices, which reduces buying power of the min wage increase, or let people go. Reduce hours. Limit overtime. Moonbats like Khanna think they know what they’re talking about, but, don’t actually have to put their own businesses on the line. And most federally elected politicians, and goodly chunk of state ones, are utterly divorced from Economics 101 and what it takes to run a business.

Read: Hot Take: Excitable Ro Khanna Wants No Small Businesses That Can’t Afford $15 Minimum Wage »

Digging Deep: Neither California’s Nor Texas’ Power Grids Could Survive Climate Apocalypse

The climate cultists just can’t help themselves, and now that they’ve posted their screeds Blaming you eating a burger for causing greenhouse gasses induced extreme winter weather (sigh), they have to get creative to protect the cult beliefs

Texas and California built different power grids, but neither stood up to climate change

stop global warmingTexas and California may be worlds apart in their politics and climate policies, but they have something in common: Extreme weather crashed their power grids and left people stranded in the dark.

The two sprawling, politically potent states have devoted massive sums to their power networks over the past two decades — California to produce huge amounts of wind and solar energy, Texas to create an efficient, go-it-alone electricity market built on gas, coal, nuclear and wind. But neither could keep the lights on in the face of the type of brutal weather that scientists call a taste of a changing climate. (snip)

The catastrophe this week in Texas left more than 4 million people in the dark and the cold, and even more without clean water, when a rare blast of Arctic air drove temperatures down, freezing both natural gas plants and wind turbines.

Texas “planned more for heatwaves than for ice storms,” said Dan Reicher, who worked in the Clinton administration’s Energy Department on renewable energy and is now at Stanford University. And the onus now is on figuring out how to prevent a repeat — a tricky situation given the independence of Texas’ grid and sharp opposition from Republicans there to linking up to other states and giving federal regulators oversight of its power system.

See, a warming world causes cold and snow and ice. And, yeah, Texas planned more for warmth than a rare cold weather system. California planned for a doomy warmth, and their system still failed hard, to the point that they had to ration electricity, that they had planned brownouts and blackouts, unlike Texas, which just saw its grid go down. It’s kinda like so many states from NC down: we have some plans for winter weather, but, that only goes so far. Northern states don’t really plan heavy for hurricanes, while, we in NC do. And they still do damage.

If we’re supposed to plan for a doomy warming world, why would we plan for crazy cold weather? Oh, right, it’s a cult.

That presents both an opportunity and a challenge for President Joe Biden, potentially aiding his efforts to draw support from lawmakers and states for his multitrillion-dollar proposals to harden the nation’s energy infrastructure to withstand climate change. But he’s already facing entrenched resistance to his pledges to shift the nation to renewable energy by 2035 — including from fossil fuel advocates who have sought to scapegoat wind and solar for the energy woes in both states.

If Joe was smart, he’d push more nuclear, Gen 5 and Gen 6. But, his base of lunatics, which has increased in numbers tremendously from the Clinton years, won’t allow nuclear, even though some climahysterics, like Michael Mann, are in favor of nuclear. If it’s mostly solar and wind states which get lots of winter weather will see the grid go down from production first, rather than mostly downed lines, blown transformers, and blown substations.

Meanwhile, they’re also dragging in SJW garbage, rich vs poor

Texas freeze shows a chilling truth – how the rich use climate change to divide us

Like the poor across America and much of the world, poor Texans are getting hammered by climate change. Many inhabit substandard homes, lacking proper insulation. The very poor occupy trailers or tents, or camp out in their cars. Lower-income communities are located close to refineries and other industrial sites that release added pollutants when they shut or restart.

In Texas, for-profit energy companies have no incentive to prepare for extreme weather or maintain spare capacity. Even if they’re able to handle surges in demand, prices go through the roof and poorer households are hit hard. If they can’t pay, they’re cut off. (snip)

Climate change, Covid-19 and jobs are together splitting Americans by class more profoundly than Americans are split by politics. The white working class is taking as much of a beating as most Black and Latino people.

mule fritter sherman potter

Read: Digging Deep: Neither California’s Nor Texas’ Power Grids Could Survive Climate Apocalypse »

If All You See…

…is the flag of a nation that won’t Take Action on the climate crisis, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is a rare link to The Gateway Pundit, with a post on China Joe ending a program that targeted sex offenders illegally in the USA.

It’s long legs week!

Read: If All You See… »

Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

stefano riboli patriotic pinup

Happy Sunday! Another fantastic day in the once and future nation of America. The Sun is shining, the geese are honking, and Texas is warming up and getting its power back. This pinup is by a more contemporary painter, first time using, Stefano Riboli, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. Hot Air covers some wild power bills in Texas
  2. The Last Refuge discusses Trump planning to speak at CPAC
  3. American Greatness notes that there’s no proof Jan 6 was an “armed insurrection”
  4. Climate Change Dispatch covers polar bears thriving. Still thriving. Can’t Warmists get a break?
  5. Jo Nova notes Texas was ready for global warming, not crazy cold and snow
  6. 357 Magnum discusses when the truth cannot be discussed
  7. Blazing Cat Fur discusses the electric snow mobile saving all Canadians or something
  8. Common Cents Blog features the landing of Perseverance on Mars
  9. Creeping Sharia covers Valparaiso U cancelling their Crusader nickname
  10. Datechguy’s Blog notes the big drop in COVID
  11. Weasel Zippers covers when experts are saying we’ll have herd immunity
  12. Vox Popoli discussing everyone hating Andrew Cuomo
  13. This ain’t Hell… highlights people saying that “America is back” with China Joe in office
  14. The Right Scoop covers NBC blasting DeSantis for prioritizing the elderly for vaccination
  15. And last, but not least, The People’s Cube wonders if it can continue, since real life has become too similar to what they’re parodying

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page (nope, that’s gone, the newest Apache killed access, and the program hasn’t been upgraded since 2014). While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your “Pinups for Vets” calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me.

Don’t forget to check out all the other great material all the linked blogs have!

Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list. And do you have a favorite blog you can recommend be added to the feedreader?

Read: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup »

Pirate's Cove