Netflix rebooting 'Captain Planet' to push pagan climate propaganda on new generation of kids



"Captain Planet and the Planeteers" was an animated television series produced by depopulationist billionaire Ted Turner, founder of the United Nations Foundation and CNN, and fellow climate alarmist Barbara Pyle, the co-founder of one of America's first legal abortion facilities.

The show, which aired in over 100 countries from 1990 to 1996, was a brazen work of pagan liberal propaganda that impressed upon American children various radical notions beyond just demonizing affordable energy, mining, Western industry, and capitalism. It had a hand in shaping the minds of some of those climate alarmists now involved in demonstrations, public tantrums, ruinous leftist policies, and vandalism.

With public concern about changing weather patterns down by double digits in parts of the West, radicals evidently feel it's time for a revival of the green-haired officer: Netflix is set to become home for a live-action adaptation of "Captain Planet."

According to Deadline, the series will be developed by Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way, Warner Bros. Television, and Greg Berlanti's Berlanti Productions. Warner Bros. Television, where Berlanti Productions is under a deal, will reportedly be the studio, reported Variety.

DiCaprio — the climate activist who downgraded last year to a $25 million superyacht and who suggested that a normal, recurrent weather phenomenon was an instance of "scary" climate change — will reportedly serve as an executive producer. The series will be written by Tara Hernandez, co-creator of the series "Mrs. Davis."

DiCaprio's involvement is a good indicator that the new show will pick up where the original left off: advancing a leftist worldview and suggesting to young Americans that human beings are harmful to the planet.

RELATED: The climate cult is brainwashing your kids — and you’re paying for it

 Ted Turner. Photo by Mike Pont/FilmMagic

Every episode in the original series opened with this narration:

Our world is in peril. Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, can no longer stand the terrible destruction plaguing our planet. She gives five magic rings to five special young people. From Africa, Kwame with the power of earth. From North America, Wheeler with the power of fire. From the Soviet Union [later changed to Eastern Europe], Linka with the power of wind. From Asia, Gi with the power of water. And from South America, Ma-Ti with the power of heart. When the five powers combined, they summon earth's greatest champion — Captain Planet!

There was nothing subtle about the agenda behind the show, which boasted vocal cameos from big-name actors including Jeff Goldblum, Tim Curry, Martin Sheen, and Sting, and whose titular protagonist threatened to "take pollution down to zero."

In one episode, the showrunners took a page out of the Chinese Communist Party's agenda and advocated for reducing the size of families, suggesting that large populations are unsustainable.

"Did you know the population of the world is now more than 5 billion?" Captain Planet asks one of Gaia's child soldiers.

"Wow! That is a lot of people!" responds one of the children. "And it's increasing by 90 million people each year," says another.

"So when it is your turn to have a family, keep it small," the Soviet and North American characters say in conclusion.

The green-haired protagonist emphasized to those viewers who would grow up to witness a catastrophic population collapse, "The more people there are, the more pressure you put on our planet."

This particular episode, "Population Bomb," borrowed its title from depopulationist Paul Ehrlich's magnum opus, a 1968 book whose faulty thesis helped inspire China's one-child policy, resulting in hundreds of millions of abortions. As with Ehrlich doom-saying about the population bomb, which never went off, his other major anti-human and anti-natalist predictions similarly failed to come true.

RELATED: Climate hysteria sets stage for suicidal behavior: Study

 Photo by ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP via Getty Images

Pyle told Good in 2016 that she made documentaries for years but found that those who watch documentaries are "smart people and also people who are already set in their ways," so she spoke to Turner about "alternative programming routes."

Turner, Pyle, and their fellow travelers apparently settled on kids' programming as the best way to advance their worldview and began pushing their agenda in cartoon form.

Pyle said in an interview with Grist, "We knew there was going to come a time when it would be necessary for an entire generation — your generation — to speak with one voice on behalf of the planet. In some ways, the entire Captain Planet series was about preparing us for this moment."

Gaia's five environmental child soldiers, who were apparently based on people Pyle knew, helped reflect her anti-Western prejudices over the course of the series. Whereas the Soviet character proved time and again to be a brainiac and the Brazilian character was an empathetic soul who could commune with animals, the North American character, Wheeler, was a mistake-prone redhead who apparently needed the most environmental coaching.

Netflix won't be breaking any new ground if its "Captain Planet" is race-obsessed, as Pyle indicated efforts were made the first time around to ensure that the pagan goddess at the center of the show wouldn't be mistaken for a "white Barbie doll," hence her portrayal instead as a "plump beige woman."

Unsurprisingly, the Captain Planet Foundation — the nonprofit founded in 1991 by Turner and Pyle — is committed to DEI.

Netflix declined to comment about the project to Deadline or Variety.

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Your health premiums are powering the left’s political machine



According to its mission statement, the American Medical Association exists “to promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health.” In practice, the AMA has become a well-funded political machine — one that uses its government-backed monopoly on medical billing codes to bankroll a progressive agenda.

Each year, the AMA collects hundreds of millions of dollars through royalties on its proprietary Current Procedural Terminology codes. These are the codes doctors use to communicate with insurers and federal agencies when they conduct checkups, order tests, or write prescriptions. Hospitals, insurance companies, and medical professionals are all required to use them — and pay for the privilege.

Instead of using its monopoly to support physicians or patients, the AMA has funneled its resources into ideological activism.

In 2023 alone, the AMA raked in nearly $285 million from CPT royalties. That isn’t a side hustle; it’s a windfall. Watchdogs now rank the AMA among the most financially powerful nonprofits in American health care.

The AMA didn’t earn that money through clinical excellence or medical innovation. It profits from what is essentially public infrastructure.

The federal government made it so. In the 1980s, Medicare and Medicaid began requiring CPT codes for billing. In 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act made CPT codes the federal standard for electronic health care transactions. That mandate gave the AMA control over an indispensable part of American medicine.

Hospitals, providers, and insurers can’t opt out. But instead of using its monopoly to support physicians or patients, the AMA has funneled its resources into ideological activism.

On gun control, the AMA has pushed bans on so-called assault weapons, supported raising the legal age of ownership to 21, and opposed allowing teachers to defend themselves in the classroom.

On climate policy, it has declared climate change a “public health crisis,” called for slashing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, and demanded “carbon neutrality” by 2050. The group even promotes plant-based diets — not to improve patient health, but to cut emissions. One AMA paper noted that producing a single serving of red meat releases 200 times more carbon dioxide than growing a serving of beans.

During the 2020 George Floyd riots, the AMA declared that racism was “an urgent threat to public health,” pledged to dismantle “racist and discriminatory policies,” and released a video in which its board members solemnly recited these mantras. The group also called for sweeping police reform, claiming “a correlation between policing and adverse health outcomes.”

This is political advocacy, not public health. And it’s not limited to official statements — it’s backed by millions of dollars the AMA collects thanks to its government-protected monopoly.

In 2024, the AMA spent nearly $25 million on lobbying — more than the AARP. By contrast, the National Rifle Association spent just $2 million. The beef and dairy industries, which stand to lose if AMA-backed climate plans move forward, spent far less.

Through lobbying and political donations, the AMA is using your money — your premiums, your tax dollars — to advance its political goals.

RELATED: The climate cult is brainwashing your kids — and you’re paying for it

  Photo by Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images

That pipeline of influence may be in jeopardy.

According to recent reports, allies of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have explored transferring CPT oversight from the AMA to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It’s a smart move that the Trump administration should take seriously.

A working model already exists. Health care providers use ICD codes — International Classification of Diseases — to document diagnoses. These codes are freely available, globally standardized, and cost nothing to use. There’s no reason procedural codes like CPT couldn’t operate the same way.

Stripping the AMA of its CPT monopoly wouldn’t just break a political racket. It would free American health care from a rent-seeking gatekeeper that has long since abandoned its original mission.

CPT codes are public infrastructure now. A private group with a political agenda shouldn’t be allowed to control access to them — especially not one that spends its royalty checks advancing the left’s culture war.

The Trump administration, with RFK Jr. at the Department of Health and Human Services, has a real opportunity here: End the royalty scheme, move CPT into the public domain, and cut off the AMA’s cash flow.

It’s time to let doctors get back to medicine — and take politics out of the exam room.

Climate hysteria sets stage for suicidal behavior: Study



Climate alarmists are future-oriented in their activism. It turns out, however, that their obsession may, in some cases, ensure that they will never meet the imminent world they tried to shape with demonstrations, public tantrums, ruinous leftist policies, and vandalism.

A paper by European and Canadian researchers published Friday in the journal Nature Medicine examined the "associations between climate-related hazards and the spectrum of suicidal behaviors, from suicidal ideation to self-harm and suicide mortality."

Citing previous studies, the researchers noted that, unsurprisingly, people directly exposed to extreme weather events may experience an increased risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. Slow-moving albeit similarly devastating environmental phenomena appear to similarly have an emotionally destabilizing impact on some individuals — the Indian farmer, for instance, who is driven to despair by drought, low crop yields, and the prospect of destitution or even starvation.

The study suggested, however, that individuals who are not directly impacted by changing weather patterns have also been observed getting bent out of shape to the point of depression and suicidality.

"Negative psychological responses related to the observed and anticipated impacts of climate change, such as climate anxiety, eco-anxiety and climate-related guilt have also emerged as a potential risk factor for poor mental health and suicide-related behavior," said the study, adding that international surveys have indicated "concern about climate change is associated with feelings of despair, hopelessness, anger, frustration, and guilt, especially among younger populations."

'Exposure to the report had a weaker association with perceived threat and climate change concern among politically right-leaning individuals.'

A study published in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources noted that while so-called climate change "has long been seen as psychologically distant from many people and therefore as a rather non-emotional problem," this view has changed in recent years, partly as a consequence of climate alarmist propaganda pushed in the media and in schools — propaganda that inevitably oversells bad news and overlooks good news, such as carbon emissions' greening of the planet.

"Many people experience climate change and other global environmental problems indirectly, or vicariously, through media representations rather than from direct exposure," said the study. "Exposure to climate change information through the media plays an important role in determining how worried people are about climate change."

A 2019 study found that Norwegians' exposure to an alarmist United Nations report on climate change was associated "with greater perceived threat from climate change and increased climate change concern."

The induction of concern worked particularly well with left-leaning individuals:

Exposure to the report had a weaker association with perceived threat and climate change concern among politically right-leaning individuals, compared with their left-leaning counterparts, and there was no association between exposure to the report and climate change concern among individuals who self-identified as being on the far-right end of the political spectrum.

These manufactured concerns can turn malignant and metastasize.

A 2020 American study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology found that climate change anxiety is not uncommon, particularly among younger adults, and is correlated with emotional responses — responses that apparently drive some victims of propaganda to swear off having children. A 2021 Lancet-published survey of 10,000 youths ages 16-25 indicated that 39% of respondents expressed hesitancy about procreating on account of climate change.

The study published last week in Nature Medicine identified various pathways from "climate-related hazards to suicidal behaviors."

For those in the camp of the indirectly impacted, such as the Norwegian cohort confronted with the U.N. concern-mongers' report, chronic, vicarious exposure to climate change can result in lowered well-being, which in turn sets the stage for suicidal behaviors.

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The media’s Great Barrier Reef hoax is bigger than the reef



The coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef is as expansive now as it has ever been recorded, with coverage nearing 40%. In fact, the coral cover has nearly tripled in the past dozen years. Despite this record expanse of coral off the coast of Australia, the climate community and mainstream media outlets unrelentingly push the narrative that the Great Barrier Reef is dying.

For example, CBS News ran one of its periodic pieces on the reef a few months ago with this terrifying headline: “Parts of Great Barrier Reef dying at record rate, alarmed researchers say; ‘worst fears’ confirmed.”

Reports of the Great Barrier Reef dying or being in peril are false, dishonest, and deliberately misleading.

The Guardian has been relentless in its apocalyptic coverage of the reef’s supposed imminent demise. More than a decade ago, the outlet essentially delivered the reef’s last rites, insisting that only a drastic reduction in carbon emissions could save it. A 2014 article, headlined “Great Barrier Reef damage ‘irreversible’ unless radical action taken,” warned: “The Great Barrier Reef will suffer irreversible damage by 2030 unless radical action is taken to lower carbon emissions.” Since that article was published, global carbon dioxide emissions have risen roughly 30%.

A coral apocalypse?

Despite the Great Barrier Reef doubling in size since then, the Guardian has doubled down on its doomsday narrative. Since the coral has not died as predicted, “coral bleaching” has emerged as the new man-made catastrophe in its reporting. These stories get distributed throughout the climate community and widely disseminated throughout its advocacy networks.

In January, the Guardian published this headline: “Catastrophic: Great Barrier Reef hit by its most widespread coral bleaching, study finds.” Just a few days ago, it followed up with, “Ningaloo and Great Barrier Reef hit by ‘profoundly distressing’ simultaneous coral bleaching events.”

From these headlines, one might assume the reef is dying. However, bleaching does not equate to death. Coral bleaching does not create a chunk of white, dead coral sold at a beach town shell shop. Instead, it occurs when the coral has lost the algae living on it, often due to a variety of stressors, including fluctuations in light or changes in water temperature. This process causes the living coral to turn white but does not necessarily kill it.

Misleading statistics

With record-high coral cover, it is mathematically probable that there will be more instances of bleaching simply because there is more coral overall. If a farmer triples the size of his apple orchard from 100 to 300 trees, and the number of trees suffering from blight triples from five to 15, that does not indicate a catastrophic increase in blight. Blaming climate change for an expected proportional increase in blight would be misleading. Yet, when it comes to coral, the media and climate activists ignore this logical correlation.

It is worth noting that when “the imminent death of the Great Barrier Reef” became a major climate story a dozen years ago, the reef had indeed shrunk dramatically. Some areas saw up to 85% of the coral cover disappear — not due to overheated ocean waters or excessive CO2, but rather due to a natural occurrence: a tropical cyclone.

A Queensland, Australia, map shows that the Great Barrier Reef runs parallel to the northeast coast. In 2009, Tropical Cyclone Hamish took a path parallel to the coastline. Instead of crossing the reef perpendicularly, it churned directly over it, causing immense damage. A few months after Hamish, the Australian Institute of Marine Sciencepublished research on the extent of the damage:

Damage ranged from "exfoliation," where the reef matrix was removed along with all that grew on it, leaving bare limestone, to "scouring" that essentially stripped all living tissue from living corals, to coral breakage in which massive coral heads as well as more delicate branching corals broke off.

Nature’s recovery

That 2009 analysis stated that it could take up to 15 years for the Great Barrier Reef to regrow to its pre-Hamish level of cover. The climate community dishonestly blamed the loss of coral cover following the cyclone on global warming, predicting a continued decline and an inevitable death. Fortunately, the reef has avoided any significant cyclone damage since 2009 and has not only returned to its prior coverage level but has continued to grow.

Reports of the Great Barrier Reef dying or being in peril are false, dishonest, and deliberately misleading.

New York Gov. Hochul's climate alarmist law will take $75 billion in reparations from energy companies for bad weather



New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) ratified climate alarmist legislation Thursday that will have the state confiscate billions of dollars from American oil, gas, and coal companies as reparations for bad weather.

Critics have suggested the law will likely face legal challenges and adversely impact consumers in the meantime.

The so-called Climate Change Superfund Act, which takes for granted that anthropogenic climate change is both real and a "grave threat to the state's communities, environment, and economy," requires those energy companies that have long kept lights on and engines roaring in the state to "bear a proportionate share of the cost of infrastructure investments and other expenses necessary for comprehensive adaptation to the impacts of climate change."

The authors of the legislation were apparently keen to discount the fact that those emissions were the product of New Yorkers' collective demand and use.

Hochul, fresh off suggesting she has helped make New York City's subway system safer, said in a statement, "With nearly every record rainfall, heat wave, and coastal storm, New Yorkers are increasingly burdened with billions of dollars in health, safety, and environmental consequences due to polluters that have historically harmed our environment."

"Establishing the Climate Superfund is the latest example of my administration taking action to hold polluters responsible for the damage done to our environment and requiring major investments in infrastructure and other projects critical to protecting our communities and economy," added the Democratic governor.

New York Democrats' punitive climate alarmist scheme — which apparently treats emissions as a regional issue where blame is concerned and doesn't bother mentioning that the worst culprits, by far, will remain untouched and more competitive in China — operates "under a standard of strict liability; companies are required to pay into the fund because the use of their products caused the pollution. No finding of wrongdoing is required."

'This ill-advised decision is guaranteed to be quickly met with a host of lawsuits and legal challenges.'

The law, sponsored by state Sen. Liz Krueger — the Democratic lawmaker who recently proposed that New York and other blue states secede from the Union following President-elect Donald Trump's landslide victory — will squeeze energy companies for $3 billion every year for the next 25 years.

When calculating how much greenhouse gas emissions and therefore guilt to apportion to each company, the state will attribute 942.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide to an entity for every million pounds of coal used; 432,180 metric tons of carbon dioxide to an entity for every million barrels of crude oil used; and 53,440 metric tons of carbon dioxide to an entity for every 1 million cubic feet of fuel gases used.

Of course, the legislation leaves rooms for the bureaucrats overseeing this scheme to play around with these equivalencies.

Krueger, apparently confident the law won't backfire like her marijuana legalization efforts, stated, "New York has fired a shot that will be heard 'round the world: The companies most responsible for the climate crisis will be held accountable."

The New York State Business Council and 30 other business groups and associations asked Hochul earlier this month to veto the climate alarmist legislation, noting in a Dec. 5 letter, "This legislation is bad public policy that raises significant implementation questions and constitutional concerns."

'This ill-advised decision is guaranteed to be quickly met with a host of lawsuits and legal challenges.'

The letter noted that the wealth redistribution scheme would "result in unintended consequences and increased costs for households and businesses"; is discriminatory, "targeting only the largest fossil fuel extraction and processing firms"; and "ignores the near universal use and benefits associated with fossil fuels.

The Business Council, disappointed by Hochul's decision, said in a statement Thursday that the law "will impose 'punitive' assessments against businesses that produced fuels that were vital to the support of New York's households, businesses, and overall economy for the past several decades" and indicated further that the legislation would likely face "protracted litigation."

Justin Wilcox, the executive director of Upstate United, an advocacy coalition of New York businesses that seeks fiscally responsible policies, similarly blasted Hochul's decision to pass the law.

"Governor Hochul's decision to sign the Climate Change Superfund Act law is a misguided move that does a disservice to all New Yorkers, who already pay enough to fund the short-sighted measures linked to the [Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act]," said Wilcox. "This ill-advised decision is guaranteed to be quickly met with a host of lawsuits and legal challenges, further burdening New York taxpayers with the responsibility to foot the bill."

Steve Milloy, founder of JunkScience.com and senior policy fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, suggested that in their eagerness to punish energy companies, New York lawmakers failed to note that "there was no warming in New York" during the emissions period.

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Democratic Sen. Mark Warner is reviving the Russian collusion narrative just in time for another election



Democratic Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), was one of the leading exponents of the Russian collusion hoax. In 2019, for instance, he claimed, "There's no one that could factually say there's not plenty of evidence of collaboration or communications between Trump Organization and Russians."

Special counsels Robert Mueller and John Durham ultimately proved him wrong, revealing there was no substantive evidence of Russian collusion in the 2016 election.

Subsequent analysis revealed that to the extent there was foreign interference, it was likely inconsequential — not including the foreign-sourced Steele dossier collected for the Clinton campaign, which Democrats used to great effect. For instance, the Washington Post, whose journalists were awarded for peddling the debunked "Russia hoax" narrative, admitted that so-called Russian trolls "had no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior" ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Before Durham could take some of the wind out of Warner's sails, the senator claimed ahead of the 2020 election, "the Russians who attacked us in 2016 are still attacking us."

The Virginia senator is apparently at it again, pre-emptively characterizing Nigel Farage's gains in Britain's July 4 election as the Kremlin's preferred outcome. According to Politico, Farage's Reform U.K. party could pick up as many as 17 seats in the British Parliament, including five from the Conservatives.

The Telegraph reported Tuesday that while Warner admitted that U.S. intelligence agencies "have not seen much [Russian] activity" around the British election, he has suggested "the chances are, as we saw in the past, this activity ramps up dramatically the closer it gets to the election."

According to the Telegraph, Warner "singled out Nigel Farage as he described Vladimir Putin's potential efforts to exploit different attitudes among British politicians towards defending Kyiv's frontlines."

Conservative party establishmentarians like Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss are reportedly in agreement that Ukraine can succeed militarily so long as it keeps receiving weapons and funding.

Farage, alternatively, recently said, "I'm not saying we shouldn't support Ukraine at all. Not for one minute. But at the end of the day most wars end in negotiation and I fear, if we don't find some way of at least sitting down and talking, that we're going to finish up with a war that goes on for year after year after year."

Warner apparently regards a difference of opinion amongst British politicians on the country's foreign policy — in this case, regarding a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine — as position capture by Russia.

"Clearly, Russia does not like the fact that the UK has been as stalwart as they have been in terms of defense on Ukraine," said Warner. "It clearly meets Putin's plans if he can lessen the British or the Americans' resolve for supporting Ukraine, he can save some money on his tanks, guns, ships and planes if he can diminish support."

In a recent BBC interview, which has been grossly mischaracterized by the English press, Farage noted that Putin has "gone from prime minister, to president, he's a clever political operator. He kills journalists. I don't like him as a human being in any way at all."

"You can recognize the fact that some people are good at what they do even if they have evil intent," continued Farage.

When asked what he'd say to Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy if in a position of influence, Farage said, "I'd say to Zelensky, 'Look, the West have been supporting you, they will go on supporting you, but the percentage of your young manhood that you're losing is so bad, isn't it time we at least tried to have a negotiation?' He couldn’t say no."

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Talking head laughs in Buttigieg's face after he glosses over the Biden admin's epic failure



Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was recently asked about one of his boss' unrealistic green schemes, namely the installation of electric vehicle charging stations across the country. His answer prompted CBS' Margaret Brennan to laugh in his face.

Apparently keen to keep the laughs coming, Buttigieg subsequently blamed airline turbulence on climate change.

Only 499,992 to go

Ahead of the 2020 election, then-candidate Joe Biden promised the American people in four debates and during his CNN town hall interview that he would build half a million new charging stations across the nation if elected.

After taking the White House, Biden reiterated his promise, stating in November 2021, "We're going to build out the first-ever national network of charging stations all across the country — over 500,000 of them. ... So you'll be able to go across the whole darn country, from East Coast to West Coast, just like you'd stop at a gas station now. These charging stations will be available."

That month, the then-Democrat-controlled Congress passed a corresponding $1 trillion infrastructure package. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and 18 other Republican lawmakers, evidently unswayed by former President Donald Trump's critiques, subsequently helped Democrats pass the measure in the U.S. Senate.

Of the 1,000 billion taxpayer dollars sunk into the bill, $73 billion was designated for updating the nation's electricity grid so it could carry more renewable energy and $7.5 billion to build Biden's promised EV charging stations by 2030.

According to the EV policy analyst group Atlas Public Policy, the funding designated for the rollout should be enough for at least 20,000 charging spots and 5,000 stations.

Now years into the scheme, it appears increasingly unlikely that Biden's costly promise will materialize.

In March, the Federal Highway Administration confirmed to the Washington Post that only seven of Biden's planned 500,000 EV charging stations were operational, amounting to a total of 38 spots for drivers in Hawaii, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to charge their vehicles.

Politico noted last year that that a National Renewable Energy Laboratory study estimated the country will need 1.2 million public chargers by 2030 to meet the demand artificially created by the Biden administration's climate agenda and corresponding regulations. As of June 2023, there were roughly 180,000 chargers nationwide.

House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and other Republican lawmakers penned a February letter to Buttigieg and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, expressing concerns that "American taxpayer dollars are being woefully mismanaged."

Over the weekend, Margaret Brennan pressed the issue further in conversation with the Biden DOT secretary on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Laughable

"Let me ask you about a portion of this that I think does fall under your portfolio, and that's the charging stations you mentioned. The Federal Highway Administration says only seven or eight charging stations have been produced with a $7.5 billion investment that taxpayers made back in 2021," said Brennan. "Why isn't that happening more quickly?"

"So the president's goal is to have half a million chargers up by the end of this decade. Now, in order to do a charger, it's more than just plunking a small device into the ground. There's utility work, and this is also really a new category of federal investment."

"But we've been working with each of the 50 states," continued Buttigieg. "Every one of them is getting formula dollars to do this work."

Brennan leaned in and asked, "Seven or eight, though?"

"Again, by 2030: 500,000 chargers," responded Buttigieg.

Brennan laughed at Buttigieg's suggestion, evidently unable to conceal her disbelief in the possibility that another 499,992 chargers could be installed and operational inside the next six years.

"And the very first handful of chargers are now already being physically built. But again, that's the absolute very, very beginning stages of the construction to come," added Buttigieg.

Despite the Biden administration admittedly being at the "very, very beginning stages," it is nevertheless trying to get gas-consuming cars off the streets and replacing them with EVs that will all rely on the handful of existing charging stations.

In March, the administration announced a rule that would limit the amount of exhaust permitted from cars such that by 2032, over half of the new cars need to be so-called zero-emissions vehicles, reported the New York Times.

Keeping it light

While short on satisfactory answers, Buttigieg still had plenty of alarmism to go around.

The DOT secretary told Brennan, "The reality is the effects of climate change are already upon us in terms of our transportation. We've seen that in the form of everything from heat waves that shouldn't statistically even be possible threatening to melt the cables of transit systems in the Pacific Northwest, to hurricane seasons becoming more and more extreme, and indications that turbulence is up by about 15%."

A study published last year in Geophysical Research Letters suggested that clear-air turbulence "is predicted to become more frequent because of climate change," claiming that the strongest category of clear-air turbulence was 55% more frequent in 2020 than in 1979.

Brennan pressed Buttigieg on whether the kind of extreme turbulence experienced last week by Singapore Airlines flight SQ321, which was traveling from London to Singapore, would soon become more common in the United States.

"To be clear, something that extreme is very rare. But turbulence can happen and sometimes it can happen unexpectedly," said Buttigieg. "This is all about making sure that we stay ahead of the curve, keeping aviation as safe as it is."

The "Face the Nation" interview was slapped with a community note on X, noting that National Transportation Safety Board data "shows there is no rising trend in aircraft turbulence incidents."

— (@)  
 

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Scientist who contributed to UN climate report touts global virus as final solution for curbing emissions



Bill McGuire, a professor emeritus of earth sciences at University College London and co-director of the New Weather Institute, has long been a climate alarmist. McGuire, whose specialty appears to be volcanoes, contributed to the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2012 report; scaremongered about the weather on numerous BBC Radio 4 series; wrote a book 16 years ago entitled "Seven Years to Save the Planet"; and now criticizes affordable energy in the pages of the Guardian.

In March, McGuire recommended that Britons "green our towns and cities"; "replac[e] tarmac and concrete with more permeable materials"; "insulate, insulate, insulate"; and paint buildings white. On Friday, the volcanist went farther, recommending against laughing off climate alarmists' prophesies.

It appears McGuire understands his proposals to be foolhardy — that more is needed than white paint and stoicism to save the world from imagined future harms.

Culling the herd

McGuire noted Saturday in since-deleted tweet, "If I am brutally honest, the only realistic way I see emissions falling as fast as they need to, to avoid catastrophic #climate breakdown, is the culling of the human population by a pandemic with a very high fatality rate."

McGuire's "realistic" solution sounds like the yet-to-be-released COVID-19 sequel that fellow alarmists, such as Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, have warned about in recent months.

At a World Economic Forum event in January, Ghebreyesus discussed Disease X and said, "Anything happening is a matter of when, not if."

The WEF suggested that "Disease X" could "result in 20 times more fatalities than the coronavirus pandemic," reported Newsweek.

McGuire appeared to have an idea of what virus might do the trick, having linked in his "culling" tweet to a Saturday article in the Guardian about the H5N1 strain of influenza, commonly referred to as the bird flu.

The thrust of the linked article was that the bird flu being examined by British scientists might ultimately leap into human beings.

Virologist Paul Digard of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh is quoted in the artlce as saying, "Now that it seems to be fairly widespread in the cow population in the U.S., that’s a much more direct route where it could transmit to people and gain the adaptations it needs to go pandemic."

The article noted further as if to reassure, "If H5N1 did start spreading among people, the good news is that the world has plenty of recent experience when it comes to rolling out large-scale vaccination programmes. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are two candidate vaccines against a related strain of flu viruses that could be shipped within weeks, if necessary."

Backpedaling

McGuire's suggestion — that the "only realistic way" to get down emissions to desirable levels would be the deaths of millions if not billions of human beings — was not well received. He evidently decided that the way forwad would be to accuse his critics of illiteracy and a collective failure of comprehension.

"I SAID 'THE ONLY WAY I SEE EMISSIONS FALLING AS FAST AS THEY NEED TO,'" McGuire wrote in a subsequent tweet.

"SEEMS LIKE A LOT OF PEOPLE CAN'T READ. I SAID 'THE ONLY WAY I SEE EMISSIONS FALLING AS FAST AS THEY NEED TO...' I DID NOT SAY 'WE NEED A PANDEMIC,'" wrote McGuire. "FFS DON'T READ THINGS INTO A STATEMENT THAT AREN'T THERE[.] I COULD HAVE SAD SOCIETY-BUSTING ASTEROID IMPACT INSTEAD OF PANDEMIC."

 
HE ONLY SAID THE HUMAN POPULATION NEEDS CULLING WHAT'S THE PROBLEM!?
— (@)  
 

McGuire's first all-caps response to his critics did not go over well, so he tried again hours later, writing, "RIGHT, I AM DELETING THE INITIAL TWEET NOW. NOT BECAUSE I REGRET IT, BUT BECAUSE SO MANY PEOPLE OUT THERE HAVE MISTAKENLY, OR INTENTIONALLY, TAKE IT THE WRONG WAY."

The Virginia Project, a Republican political action committee among the many groups and individuals that blasted McGuire, wrote, "The world understood exactly what you meant, which is that in order to meet the goals of 'climate change' fanatics, a mass extermination of humanity on a global scale is necessary. That is the logical conclusion of 'climate change' advocacy. You just got caught admitting it."

 
The world understood exactly what you meant, which is that in order to meet the goals of "climate change" fanatics, a mass extermination of humanity on a global scale is necessary.\n\nThat is the logical conclusion of "climate change" advocacy. You just got caught admitting it.
— (@)  
 

Multitudes of other users on X suggested likewise, prompting McGuire to suggest that by a pandemic-driven "culling," he actually meant a drop in economic productivity — the kind that in recent years corresponding with millions of people dying worldwide.

 
Reworded\n\nEmissions have only fallen at times of major economic shock, due to pandemic or otherwise\n\nA much bigger one is the only way emissions will fall by at least 50% in 66 months - needed to have any chance of dodging dangerous, all pervasive, #climate breakdown
— (@)  
 

McGuire added in a Sunday tweet, "Would love to hear how emissions can be cut by at east 50% in the next 66 months (by 2030) without a major socio-economic shock that slashes economic activity[.] This MUST happen to have any chance of sidestepping dangerous, all-pervasive, climate breakdown."

— (@)  
 

While McGuire appears to have said the quiet part out loud, he is hardly the only Britsh-based climate alarmist to publicly showcase his hostility toward human life in recent months.

Blaze News previously reported that Donnachadh McCarthy, a failed politician involved in Just Stop Oil and one of the leading figures of Extinction Rebellion, went on British television earlier this year to suggest that "there is a moral issue" with having too many children and that families should be limited to one child.

Late last year, scientists at the U.K. Center for Ecology and Hydrology raised the alarm that human breathing is contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, urging "caution in the assumption that emissions from humans are negligible."

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Biden White House considering declaration of a 'national climate emergency' in order to grant itself special powers



The Biden White House is once again entertaining the possibility of conferring itself unprecedented powers to hobble American energy producers and win over leftists, all in the name of changing weather patterns.

Forbes Media chairman Steve Forbes characterized the proposed declaration as a "cowardly way to try to win this election."

Emergency powers then and now

The National Emergencies Act enables the president to activate special powers during a crisis. Since the law went into effect in 1976, it has been invoked scores of times.

When former President Donald Trump was in office, the Brennan Center for Justice, a leftist public policy institute, raised the alarm about the "vast array of obscure presidential powers" the NEA affords presidents in the face of a supposed emergency.

The Brennan Center noted that the emergency powers "cover almost every imaginable subject area, including the military, land use, public health, trade, federal pay schedules, agriculture, transportation, communications, and criminal law."

One statute unlocked following an NEA declaration would enable the president to "suspend a law that prohibits the testing of chemical and biological weapons on unwitting human subjects." Another would allow the president to commandeer radio stations.

Elizabeth Goitein, senior director and expert on presidential emergency powers at the Brennan Center, noted in the Atlantic that "the president is free to use any of them; the National Emergencies Act doesn't require that the powers invoked relate to the nature of the emergency. Even if the crisis at hand is, say, a nationwide crop blight, the president may activate the law that allows the secretary of transportation to requisition any privately owned vessel at sea."

The New York Times noted in 2019 that when it comes to an NEA declaration, it likely doesn't matter if "there is no true emergency" and that as a "matter of legal procedure, facts may be irrelevant."

While leftists, future Biden boosters, and Fox News hosts complained when Trump declared a national emergency to curb illegal immigration and secure the border, some appear less resistant now to an emergency declaration that affords fellow travelers more power.

Fake crisis, real power

In 2022, Biden faced significant pressure from Democratic lawmakers and other radicals to declare a national climate emergency as a means to unilaterally kill federal oil drilling and ramp up so-called clean energy projects.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in July 2022, "The climate emergency is not going to happen tomorrow, but we still have it on the table."

The option is evidently still on the table.

Citing people "familiar with the matter," Bloomberg reported last week that White House officials have renewed discussions about declaring a national climate emergency.

Biden's top advisers would be able to cut back exports of American crude oil just as Iran's oil exports hit a 6-year high and altogether throttle the supply of oil and gas; limit the movement of trains and ships; kill offshore drilling; limit Americans' greenhouse gas emissions; and more.

The Times previously indicated that the regime could also compel domestic industries to produce more renewable energy and transportation technologies and free up taxpayer funds for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fritter away on supposedly green causes.

Advisers apparently figure the unilateral measure would resonate with "climate-minded voters."

Wrecking the economy

Steve Forbes told Fox Business' "The Evening Edit" Thursday that "you're going to pay for it with an even more troubled economy."

The declaration would "give him the power to stop drilling offshore, stop export of crude, ... delay pipelines and the like — just throttle the whole fossil fuel industry even more than they're doing," said Forbes. "What that only does is wreck the economy. It means higher energy prices."

"Just look at Europe. Germany has two to three times the electricity costs times the electricity costs of the U.S. because of the kind of stuff the Biden administration is doing now. They've learned a hard lesson," continued Forbes. "This administration's throwing it all away, all sensible policies away, as a cheap way, a cowardly way to try to win this election."

Forbes appeared somewhat optimistic, suggesting that most young people "will see through it" and understand the declaration would do them harm as well.

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Watchdog accuses Biden administration of pushing 'misleading and inaccurate claims' in climate report



A nonpartisan government watchdog group has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Commerce, requesting an investigation into possibly unethical and unscientific practices at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The watchdog is specifically concerned with NOAA's Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters tracking project, also know as the Billions Project, which has kept track of weather-related disasters since 1980. As the name would suggest, the project focuses on disasters that supposedly result in losses of $1 billion or more.

According to Protect the Public's Trust, those behind the Billions Project may be responsible for "scientific integrity violations" as well as "misleading and inaccurate claims about the Project's dataset."

This is especially troubling because the Billions Project is greatly impactful. It has been cited by the U.S. Global Change Research Program as a "climate change indicator"; its data was referenced last year as evidence that "extreme events are becoming more frequent and severe" in the same federal program's "Fifth National Climate Assessment"; and its results have reportedly been cited in nearly 1,000 articles.

Protect the Public's Trust noted in its April 3 letter to NOAA science integrity officer Cynthia Decker and to Roderick Anderson, the acting inspector general of the U.S. DOC, "Though cited as evidence of climate change effects, the Billions Project does not utilize climate data. The Project's dataset only collects and reports economic data about disaster losses."

Since it relies upon economic data, PPT noted that the Billions Project "cannot distinguish the effect of climate change as a factor on disaster losses from the effect of human factors like increases in the vulnerability and exposure of people and wealth to disaster damages due to population and economic growth."

The PPT alleged that the project:

  • employs opaque methods to calculate losses from individual disaster events that "result in drastically higher loss estimates than those reported by other institutions at NOAA";
  • uses "undisclosed non-traditional costs in its calculations [which] can mislead and misinform the public about the relevant scale of the disaster losses reported in the Project's dataset";
  • adds and removes disaster events from the dataset without so much as an explanation;
  • adjusts its loss data "beyond what inflation-adjustments require and does so for unexplained reasons";
  • "'scales up' loss data based on various factors without disclosing the methodology for its calculation or the baseline data"; and
  • appears to use inconsistent calculation methods over time.

The PPT stressed that the "national conversation on climate change and disaster-response should not be tainted by inaccurate, misleading, and self-serving scientific analysis."

"The American public has every right to expect, even demand, that the scientific research funded by their tax dollars is conducted under the most rigorous standards of integrity, transparency, and quality," said PPT director Michael Chamberlain in a statement.

"This is especially true when that research is used to underpin decisions that affect nearly every aspect of their lives — from the cars they drive, to the foods they eat, to how those foods are prepared. Despite the fact the Billions Project is being used to affect precisely these types of decisions, the principles of scientific integrity, transparency, and quality appear to be severely lacking in its work," added Chamberlain.

Just the News reported that the study by Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. referenced in the PPT complaint raised similar concerns earlier this year.

Pielke, an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, underscored in the pre-print of his forthcoming paper that "public claims promoted by NOAA associated with the dataset and its significance are flawed and misleading. ... Similarly flawed are NOAA's claims that increasing annual counts of billion dollar disasters are in part a consequence of human caused climate change."

NOAA responded in January to this line of critique, telling Just the News that "the methodologies of the Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters product are laid out in Smith and Katz, 2013, a peer-reviewed publication, and follow NOAA’s Information Quality and Scientific Integrity Policies."

Chamberlain found the spokesman's response to be "of the 'you'll just have to trust us' variety. While they may call themselves 'scientists,' that's not how science works."

The Billions Project concluded in its last annual report that there were 28 weather and climate disasters in 2023, "surpassing the previous record of 22 in 2020, tallying a price tag of at least $92.9 billion. The project claims that the U.S. has sustained 378 weather and climate disasters each resulting in at least $1 billion in damages or costs since 1980. These allegedly add up to $2.69 trillion.

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