The Case Against Net Zero – Unachievable Disastrous Pointless
By Robin Guenier | Climate Scepticism | October 14, 2024
In October 2008, Parliament passed the Climate Change Act requiring the UK Government to ensure that by 2050 ‘the net UK carbon account’ was reduced to a level at least 80% lower than that of 1990; ‘carbon account’ refers to CO2 and ‘other targeted greenhouse gas emissions’. Only five MPs voted against it. Then in 2019, by secondary legislation and without serious debate, Parliament increased the 80% reduction requirement to 100% – thereby creating the Net Zero policy.i
Unfortunately, it’s a policy that’s unachievable, potentially disastrous and in any case pointless. And that’s true whether or not humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to increased global temperatures.
1. It’s unachievable.
A modern, advanced economy depends on fossil fuels; something that’s unlikely to change for a long time.ii Examples fall into two categories: (i) vehicles and machines such as those used in agriculture, mining, mineral processing, building, heavy transportation, commercial shipping, commercial aviation, the military and emergency services and (ii) products such as nitrogen fertilisers, cement and concrete, primary steel, plastics, insecticides, pharmaceuticals, anaesthetics, lubricants, solvents, paints, adhesives, insulation, tyres and asphalt. All the above require either the combustion of fossil fuels or are made from oil derivatives: easily deployable, commercially viable alternatives have yet to be developed.iii
Although wind is the most effective source of renewable electricity in the U.K. – because of its latitude, solar power contributes only a small percentage of the UK’s electricity – it has significant problems: (i) the substantial and increasing costs of building, operating and maintaining the huge numbers of turbines needed for Net Zero; (ii) the complex engineering and cost challenges of establishing a stable, reliable, comprehensive non-fossil fuel grid by 2030 as planned by the Government; (iii) the vast scale of what’s involved (a multitude of enormous wind turbines, immense amounts of space iv and large quantities of increasingly unavailable and expensive raw materials); and (iv) the intermittency of renewable energy (see 2 below).v This means that the UK may be unable to generate sufficient electricity by 2030 for current needs let alone for the mandated EVs (electric vehicles) and heat pumps and for the energy requirements of industry and of the huge new data centres being developed to support the rapid growth of AI (artificial intelligence).
In any case, the UK doesn’t have enough skilled technical managers, electrical, heating and other engineers, electricians, plumbers, welders, mechanics and other skilled tradespeople required to do the multitude of tasks essential to achieve Net Zero – a problem worsened by the Government’s plans for massively increased house building.vi
2. It would be socially and economically disastrous.
The Government aims for 100% renewable electricity by 2030 but has yet to publish a fully costed engineering plan for the provision of comprehensive grid-scale back-up when there’s little or no wind or sun; a problem that’s complicated by the imminent retirement of elderly nuclear and fossil fuel power plants. The Government has indicated that back-up may be provided by new gas-fired power plants vii but it has yet to publish any detail. That of course would not be a ‘clean’ solution and it seems the Government’s answer is to fit them with carbon capture and underground storage (CCS) systems: a ‘solution’ that’s very expensive, controversial and commercially unproven at scale.viii This issue is desperately important: without full back-up, electricity blackouts would be inevitable – potentially ruining many businesses and causing dreadful problems for millions of people, including serious health consequences threatening everyone and in particular the poor and vulnerable.ix
Net Zero’s major problem however is its overall cost and the impact of that on the economy. Because there’s no coherent plan for the project’s delivery, little attention has been given to overall cost; but with several trillion pounds seeming likely to be a correct estimate it would almost certainly be unaffordable.x The borrowing and taxes required for costs at this scale could destroy Britain’s credit standing and put an impossible burden on millions of households and businesses. It could quite possibly mean that the UK would face economic collapse.
But Net Zero is already causing one serious economic problem: because of renewable subsidies, carbon taxes, grid balancing costs and capacity market costs, the UK has the highest industrial and domestic electricity prices in the developed world.xi The additional costs referred to elsewhere in this essay – for example the costs of establishing a comprehensive non-fossil grid and of providing gas-fired power plants fitted with CCS as back-up – can only make this worse. Unless urgent remedial action is taken, the government is most unlikely to be able to achieve its principal mission of increased economic growth.
Net Zero would have two other dire consequences:
(i) As China essentially controls the supply of key materials (for example, lithium, cobalt, aluminium, processed graphite, nickel, copper and so-called rare earths) without which renewables cannot be manufactured, the UK would greatly increase its already damaging dependence on it, putting its energy and overall national security at most serious risk.xii It would also mean that, while impoverishing Britain, Net Zero would be enriching China.xiii
(ii) The vast mining and mineral processing operations required for renewables are already causing appalling environmental damage and dreadful human suffering throughout the world, affecting in particular fragile, unspoilt ecosystems and many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people; the continued pursuit of Net Zero would make all this far worse.xiv
3. In any case it’s pointless.
For two reasons:
(i) It’s absurd to regard the closure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting plants in the UK and their ‘export’ mainly to SE Asian countries (especially China), commonly with poor environmental regulation and often powered by coal-fired electricity – thereby increasing global emissions – as a positive step towards Net Zero. Yet efforts to ‘decarbonise’ the UK mean that’s what’s happening: it’s why we no longer produce many key chemicals and, by closing our few remaining blast furnaces, will soon be unable to produce commercially viable primary steel (see endnote iii).xv
(ii) Most major non-Western countries – the source of over 70% of GHG emissions and home to 84% of humanity – don’t regard emission reduction as a priority and, either exempt (by international agreement) from or ignoring any obligation to reduce their emissions, are focused instead on economic and social development, poverty eradication and energy security.xvi As a result, global emissions are increasing (by 62% since 1990) and are set to continue to increase for the foreseeable future. As the UK is the source of just 0.72% of global emissions any further emission reduction it may achieve would essentially have no impact on the global position.xvii
In other words, Net Zero means the UK is legally obliged to pursue an unachievable, potentially disastrous and pointless policy – a policy that could result in Britain’s economic destruction.
Robin Guenier October 2024
Guenier is a retired, writer, speaker and business consultant. He has a degree in law from Oxford, is qualified as a barrister and for twenty years was chief executive of various high-tech companies, including the Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency reporting to the UK Cabinet Office. A Freeman of the City of London, he was Executive Director of Taskforce 2000, founder chair of the medical online research company MedixGlobal and a regular contributor to TV and radio.
End notes:
i http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/27/part/1/crossheading/the-target-for-2050
ii See Vaclav Smil’s important book, How the World Really Works: https://time.com/6175734/reliance-on-fossil-fuels/
iii Regarding steel for example see the penultimate paragraph of this article: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/the-blast-furnace-800-years-of-technology.
iv See Andrews & Jelley, “Energy Science”, 3rd ed., Oxford, page 16: http://tiny.cc/4jhezz
v For a view of wind power’s many problems, see this: https://watt-logic.com/2023/06/14/wind-farm-costs/ This is also relevant: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/debunking-cheap-renewables-myth
vi A detailed Government report: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65855506fc07f3000d8d46bd/Employer_skills_survey_2022_research_report.pdf See also pages 10 and 11 of the Royal Academy of Engineering report (Note 6 below).
vii See this report by the Royal Academy of Engineering: https://nepc.raeng.org.uk/media/uoqclnri/electricity-decarbonisation-report.pdf (Go to section 2.4.3 on page 22.) This interesting report contains a lot of valuable information.
viii This International Institute for Sustainable Development report on CCS is informative: https://www.iisd.org/articles/insight/unpacking-carbon-capture-storage-technology And see the second and third paragraphs here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/12/fossil-fuel-companies-environment-greenwashing (the rest of the article is also interesting).
ix This article shows how more renewables could result in blackouts: http://tiny.cc/lnhezz
x The National Grid (now the National Energy System Operator (NESO)) has said net zero will cost £3 trillion: https://www.current-news.co.uk/reaching-net-zero-to-cost-3bn-says-national-grid-eso/. And in this presentation Michael Kelly, Emeritus Professor of Technology at Cambridge, shows how the cost would amount to several trillion pounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkImqOxMqvU
xi The facts, an explanation of why Net Zero is responsible and a proposed solution are cogently set out here: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/uk-electricity-prices-highest-in-world.
xii https://www.dw.com/en/the-eus-risky-dependency-on-critical-chinese-metals/a-61462687
xiii Discussed here: https://dailysceptic.org/2024/07/24/net-zero-is-impoverishing-the-west-and-enriching-china/
xiv See this for example: http://tiny.cc/3lhezz. Arguably however the most compelling and harrowing evidence is found in Siddharth Kara’s book Cobalt Red – about the horrors of cobalt mining in the Congo: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250284297/cobaltred
xv A current example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70zxjldqnxo
xvi This essay shows how developing countries have taken control of climate negotiations: https://ipccreport.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/the-west-vs-the-rest-2.1.1.pdf (Nothing that’s happened since 2020 changes the conclusion: for example see the ‘Dubai Stocktake’ agreed at COP28 in 2023 of which item 38 unambiguously confirms developing countries’ exemption from any emission reduction obligation.)
xvii This comprehensive analysis, based on an EU Commission database, provides – re global greenhouse gas (GHG) and CO2 emissions – detailed information by country from 1990 to 2023: https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2024?vis=ghgtot#emissions_table
Our Chemical Lives
Are we in an uncontrolled, human experiment?
Maryanne Demasi, reports | August 28, 2024
This week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr sat down for his first interview with Tucker Carlson since announcing he was suspending his presidential campaign and throwing his support behind former President Donald Trump.
In that interview, Kennedy echoed the thoughts of Calley and Casey Means, a brother and sister team, who’ve been raising concerns about children’s exposure to the toxic food environment.
In particular, Kennedy mentioned endocrine disruptors, which are chemicals in our food and water that can interfere with the body’s hormone biosynthesis and metabolism.
Kennedy spoke about how the poorly regulated use of these synthetic chemicals in the environment could affect fertility, sperm counts and reproductive development.
He talked about how the onset of puberty is occurring far earlier in children than it was decades ago, and that these changes may have lasting repercussions on a child’s mental and physical development.
It is true.
In 2020, an analysis of global data found the average age of puberty onset for girls aged 8 to 13 years in the US has been dropping by about three months every decade over 40 years.
It means that a growing number of children are developing breasts, acne, pubic hair or a deepening of the voice before they reach teenage years.
Exposure to these chemicals begins in utero, and can have a significant impact on the developing foetus.
Several years ago, when I was working as a filmmaker for ABC TV in Australia, I produced a documentary about the ‘chemical soup’ of modern life and its potential health consequences.
I examined the regulation and testing around industrial chemicals in the environment, and spoke to experts around the world who shared the same concerns as Kennedy.
Linda Birnbaum, a toxicologist and former director of the US National Toxicology Program, was very critical of the regulation of industrial chemicals in America.
“In the US, we basically consider chemicals safe until proven otherwise,” she said.
Birnbaum was particularly concerned about foetal exposure to chemicals. Endocrine disruptors such as Bisphenol A (or BPA) can cross the placenta and reach a developing foetus.
She said it’s like “throwing a monkey wrench into the system and it can never recover …so you’ll have permanent change.”
Researchers were first alerted to the impact of endocrine disruptors in wildlife after observing the widespread feminisation of male fish in English rivers that were polluted with effluent, containing biologically active oestrogen.
Feminised male fish in SE London rivers Image Source: mihtiander/123RF
Similarly, a chemical spill in Florida’s Lake Apopka led to alligators exhibiting significantly smaller penises (24% decrease) and lower testosterone levels (70% lower) when compared to alligators of similar size in Lake Woodruff.
Alligator Gathering at Lake Apopka, Credit: RC Scott Photography
In humans, making ‘causal’ links to reproductive changes is more difficult, but Australian experts say a 50% increase in testicular cancer, for example, is “too fast to be entirely genetic, and therefore is likely to be environmental.”
John Aitken is a world leader in reproductive biology with a focus on male reproductive health and biology of mammalian reproductive cells. He says the development of testes in the womb is a very “sensitive barometer” of environmental toxicants.
“When environmental chemicals hit the testes, there are some cells sitting in the testes that are of a very primitive kind, and they respond very abnormally to that signal and give you that testicular cancer (later in life),” said Aitken.
Andrea Gore, a toxicologist at the University of Texas, spearheaded a report by the Endocrine Society after doctors began noticing an increase in reproductive problems and disorders of puberty and wondered if endocrine disruptors were to blame.
The dose is crucially important for any toxicological consideration. Often industry studies examine the safety of a single chemical for short durations, but in the real world, we are repeatedly exposed to a cocktail of chemicals, which render many of the studies irrelevant.
Ian Shaw, professor of toxicology at the University of Canterbury, said that hormones work at “infinitesimally tiny doses” and the doses of oestrogenic chemicals in food and water that children are exposed to are “well within the range of doses to have a biological effect.”
Bruce Lanphear, a health sciences professor at Simon Fraser University, said that even low levels of chemicals like lead and flame retardants, can have an impact on brain development.
These chemicals act as “dopaminergic toxicants” which disrupt the pre-frontal cortex – the part of the brain that makes us human. US data show that exposure to endocrine disruptors like lead is associated with a 5-point decrement in IQ.
“When we see this on a population level, the impact is phenomenal,” said Lanphear.
In the US, for example, if you shift the mean IQ by 5-points, it leads to an increase in children who are considered ‘challenged’ (from 6 to 9.4 million). And there’s a corresponding decrease in ‘gifted’ children (from 6 to 2.4 million).
“The pattern is pretty clear,” said Lanphear who has advocated for more stringent regulation of industrial chemicals. “We should expect that some of these chemicals [turn out ] to be toxic, and we should no longer be using our children as guinea pigs to find out when they are toxic.”
Until recently, Lanphear was co-chair of the Health Canada’s scientific advisory committee on pesticide management, but resigned in June 2023 over the agencies lack of transparency and scientific oversight.
In his three-page resignation letter, Lanphear said he felt the committee, and his role as co-chair, “provides a false sense of security” that Health Canada is protecting Canadians from toxic pesticides.
Some chemicals are stored in our body for years, whereas others can be metabolised and excreted quickly.
BPA, for example, is a short-lived chemical used to make plastic water bottles. It does not require the same safety testing as if it was added to food, but it still leaches out of the plastic and into the water that will be consumed.
Industry has responded to these concerns by developing plastics that are “BPA-free,” but BPA is often substituted for Bisphenol S (or BPS), another unregulated chemical that can also leach out of plastic into food and drink.
BPA free plastic containers are widely available
In fact, a recent literature review suggested that BPS could be more toxic to the reproductive system than BPA and was shown to hormonally promote certain breast cancers at the same rate as BPA.
There is general agreement among scientists in the field that regulators are not doing their job by simply waiting for “more evidence” of harm before they act.
They say it’s unacceptable that we are all subjected to this uncontrolled, human experiment.
Will political leaders like RFK Jr be the catalyst for change?
Shattered wind turbine closes Nantucket beaches feds suspend Vineyard Wind
By Craig Rucker | CFACT | July 18, 2024
A massive wind turbine blade shattered causing an extensive debris field that shut down beaches on tony Nantucket Island.
As workers in protective clothing resembling hazmat suits rushed to contain the damage, “the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said Wednesday that operations at Vineyard Wind have been suspended until it can be determined whether the ‘blade failure’ impacts other turbine blades on the development,” according to The Associated Press.
Check out the photo above, taken by whale protection activist Mary Chalke.
The Vineyard Gazette reports that Vineyard Wind is “the first approved and currently largest offshore wind energy project in the country… The Vineyard Wind turbines are over 800 feet tall, with blades as long as a football field. As of last month, Vineyard Wind had 10 turbines in operation, generating about 136 megawatts of power. About a dozen more were under construction. The turbines are manufactured by GE Vernova, and the company is responsible for them as they are initially installed.”
GE Vernova stock plummeted 9.3% following the federal order to suspend operations.
A GE Vernova turbine blade failed at the U.K.’s massive Dogger Bank wind installation this spring, and another broke several blades in Germany this fall.
Last month, America Electric Power filed suit against GE Vernova over quality and warranty concerns, alleging that “within only two to three years of commercial operation, the GE wind turbine generators have exhibited numerous material defects on major components and experienced several complete failures, at least one turbine blade liberation event, and other deficiencies.”
Wind turbine blades are made from fiberglass, or fiber-reinforced plastic, and cannot be recycled. CFACT has yet to see any serious proposal as to what to do with the mountain of waste that will result when thousands of turbine blades reach the end of their useful lives in 10-20 years.
CFACT has actively challenged the Biden Administration’s rush to transform America’s coasts into industrial wind turbine sites, focusing on the threat they pose to marine mammals, the power grid, and the economic hazards of mining rare earths and other materials in developing nations.
Our federal “watchdogs” should call a halt to wind turbine construction until the potential hazards they pose to the Jersey Shore, the Virginia coast, and the rest of our national waters are genuinely understood.
Beautiful Nantucket Island and neighboring Martha’s Vineyard are the chosen summer playgrounds of America’s rich and famous, including Barack and Michelle Obama.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis quipped last night that the wealthy Left “support open borders allowing millions and millions of illegal aliens to pour into our country and to burden our communities, but just don’t send any to Martha’s Vineyard then they get really upset.”
Let’s see how the beautiful people, who have been so vociferous in pushing wind and solar on the rest of us, enjoy picking fiberglass shards out of their beach picnics.
The Titanic scale of floating wind turbines quantified
By David Wojick | CFACT | July 17, 2024
My regular readers know that I have often referred to the huge size of floating wind turbine assemblies. They are much bigger than fixed offshore wind turbine assemblies because there is a big float attached. This makes floating wind far more expensive than fixed wind, which is already far more expensive than reliable fuel-fired electric power.
Simple physics says that if you want to put a 2,000-ton generator on top of a 500-foot tower with three 300-foot wings attached on a boat and have it still stand up in hurricane-force winds, it will have to be a mighty big boat.
Happily, Philip Lewis from strategic analyst Intelatus has put some numbers on this nonsense in Offshore Engineer.
See https://www.oedigital.com/news/504812-addressing-the-challenges-of-developing-floating-wind-at-scale
Of course, these are just estimates based on proposed designs, not measurements. Keep in mind that no one, anywhere, has ever built one of these Titanic monsters. Governments are setting huge targets for a technology that does not exist.
Based on UK permit applications, we are looking at a colossal individual floater footprint of around 160,000 square feet. That is roughly three football fields, so a mighty big float. And the UK does not get anything like hurricane-force winds. Maybe 100 mph, but never 160.
Weight-wise, Lewis suggests up to 5,000 tons of steel or 20,000 tons of concrete per float. Mind you, 5,000 tons of steel floaters will not keep 2,000 tons on a tall pole upright. These designs are what are called “semi-submersible”. This means the Titanic float is something like half full of water. There is enough air to float it but also a lot of water to hopefully weigh it down. I have yet to see the math on all this and have my doubts about its viability, but this is what is reported.
Of course, these huge floaters make floating wind power extremely expensive. The guess is at least three times as much as the already ridiculously expensive fixed-bottom offshore wind power. It could be a lot more.
These enormous numbers are based on 15 MW turbines, which are the biggest built today, although none has yet been installed and operational offshore. But bigger are coming with 18 MW on order and 20 MW advertised. Floater size and weight scale exponentially with turbine weight and height, so the above huge numbers may actually be quite small.
As an engineer, I would build a few of these monster floating assemblies and run them through a few hurricanes to see how they did, especially if they survived. Of course, the hell-bent Biden folks and green States are doing nothing like that.
For example, next month, Biden’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is selling 15,000 MW of floating wind leases in the Gulf of Maine. California just announced a 25,000 MW floating wind target with 5,000 MW already leased by BOEM.
Just to play with numbers, this 40,000 MW of floaters would take just under 3,000 of these monster 15 MW floaters. In addition to filling up a lot of surface ocean, each has to be anchored to the sea floor with at least three mooring cables, more likely around eight each. Plus each has a live wire cable transmitting its energy output.
Lewis says the depths involved are like this: “In the U.S., the first commercial-scale projects will be off California (500-1,300 meters). Future activity is planned off Oregon (550-1,500 meters), the Gulf of Maine (190-300 meters), and the Central Atlantic (over 2,000 meters).” A mile is roughly 1,600 meters.
So we have many millions of feet of mooring cables and hot wires filling the ocean between the floaters and the sea floor. This is a whole new form of harassment that needs to be authorized (or not) under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
What is really funny is I see no plans for building these thousands of Titanic floating wind assemblies. I recently pointed out that the Biden Transportation Dept was illegally diverting almost a billion dollars to build floating wind fabrication facilities in Maine and California. But, neither facility design has what it would take to actually make this stupendous semi-submersible junk, starting with dry docks.
I strongly suggest we put a big hold on leasing and funding floating wind technology. Let’s first see how and if it works and at what cost.
American Exceptionalism: US Foreign Policy Advisors Urge Resumption of Nuclear Testing
By John Miles – Sputnik – 07.07.2024
As of 2024 the United States is still the only country to have deployed nuclear weapons in a military setting, killing over 150,000 people in nuclear attacks in Japan as the country was on the brink of surrender amid an looming Russian attack.
Prominent figures in the United States national security establishment are pushing a resumption of nuclear weapons testing as the country continues to move towards weakening international arms control frameworks.
Former US national security advisor Robert O’Brien and George W. Bush State Department adviser Christian Whiton are among the foreign policy luminaries pushing the policy.
The Heritage Foundation think tank is also urging immediate nuclear testing if former President Donald Trump wins the White House this fall; the organization urged a remediation of “former Manhattan Project and Cold War nuclear material sites” in a recent policy blueprint, demonstrating the continued influence of neoconservative foreign policy advocacy in Republican Party politics.
The think tank also backed the development of “new nuclear weapons and naval nuclear reactors.” Spent fuel from US reactors has been used in depleted uranium weaponry that the United States has repeatedly deployed in theaters of war such as Iraq and NATO aggression in Serbia. Human rights groups have called for the weapons to be banned, noting their depraved use on civilian populations in Belgrade and Fallujah has continued to result in elevated rates of cancer and birth defects.
“Since 1992, the U.S. has refrained from explosive nuclear testing and opted for other techniques, including expert appraisals and sophisticated modeling generated by supercomputers, to calculate the efficacy of its long-term stockpile and its newer weapons,” wrote analyst Zeeshan Aleem.
“That policy has helped nudge other countries away from pursuing live testing,” he added.
The resumption of live testing could actually worsen US national security, some experts have claimed, because it would allow adversaries to directly observe the country’s nuclear capabilities during real-world trials.
“Resuming U.S. nuclear testing is technically and militarily unnecessary,” according to Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association. “Moreover, it would lead to a global chain reaction of nuclear testing, raise global tensions, and blow apart global nonproliferation efforts at a time of heightened nuclear danger.”
The United States has frequently weakened international arms control efforts and has moved to end long standing agreements between the US and Russia in particular. The George W. Bush administration ended the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, while the Obama administration moved to install missile interception facilities in Romania.
The offensive NATO military alliance continued to expand during the Democratic president’s administration, absorbing Albania and Croatia in 2009.
“The reality is the United States has commandeered NATO in the European Union as a proxy army, and a slave economic force, and made Europe to be puppets and pawns of American foreign policy,” noted former US Army psychological warfare officer and US State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett. “The American government’s agenda – and specifically the banks, globalists and military-industrial complex, and the CIA have – all pursued an agenda to drive the break-up of Russia and the theft of its resources since 1990.”
Bennett noted that the United States’ shredding of arms control treaties has forced Moscow to prepare for the possibility of a nuclear war launched by an increasingly irrational and Russophobic West.
“It is precisely because the United States has become so untrustworthy and unstable and indeed deceitful in everything it says and does, and in every document it claims to sign and promise, it has forced President Putin to act in certain ways,” said the analyst.
“In order to preserve and protect Russia Putin understands he must have the flexibility and maneuverability to guarantee the West does not attempt to secretly undermine or exploit the vulnerabilities that Russia might have as a result of its futile hope in the United States being honorable.”
Winning the Fluoride Fight – #SolutionsWatch
Corbett | June 19, 2024
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Joining us today is Michael Connett, lead attorney for the plaintiffs’ in the #FluorideLawsuit. We discuss the history of the lawsuit, what’s at stake, and how people who are concerned about the fluoridation of the water supply can get involved in the fight against this uncontrolled medical intervention.
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SHOW NOTES:
“Fluoride” on The Corbett Report
Interview 1352 – Dr. Paul Connett on the Case Against Fluoride
TSCA Fluoride Lawsuit (Fluoride Action Network explainer page)
Food and Water Watch et al. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency et al. – Court page
Michael Connett – profile at Siri & Glimstad
Dr. Phillipe Grandjean Exposes The History Of Fluoride’s Harms (Derrick Broze interview)
Fluoride Trial Interview – Dr. Bruce Lanphear (Derrick Broze interview)
Fluoride Trial Interview – Dr. Howard Hu (Derrick Broze interview)
In re: Roundup Products Liability Litigation (MDL No. 2741)
Fluoride on Trial documentary / conversation with Michael Connett in Dallas
Brazilian experts warn of the risk of western intervention in the Amazon region
By Raphael Machado | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 17, 2024
On June 11, an important debate took place in the Brazilian Congress which could have some interesting repercussions. The event, called the “Debate on National Sovereignty in the 21st Century,” was held within the scope of the Foreign Relations and National Defense Committee of Congress, organized at the request of Representative Luiz Philippe de Orleans e Bragança.
The debate, held within one of the most important committees of the Brazilian Congress (as it deals precisely with fundamental state issues), included the participation of important specialists in military and intelligence matters, such as Commander Robinson Farinazzo, officer of the Brazilian Navy, the defense analyst Albert Caballé, and Professor Ricardo Cabral, former professor at the Naval War College, among others.
Referring to statements by former NATO officers, presidents, and prime ministers of various countries connected to the Atlantic Alliance, Farinazzo highlighted the fact that the fate of Brazilian territories, especially the Amazon region and its rainforest, is discussed in summits held outside Brazil, without the representation of Brazilian interests.
As an example, Farinazzo recalled a draft resolution in the United Nations Security Council, dated 2021, which aimed to categorize general climate issues as “security threats” that could be discussed, overseen, and operated within the framework of the Security Council. This draft was vetoed by Russia and India and did not have the support of China, which abstained.
Although the draft did not specifically mention the Amazon or Brazil, it is impossible to ignore the numerous references to the “internationalization of the Amazon,” seen as the “heritage of humanity,” in the context of the radicalization of ecoglobalist discourses created within the centers of knowledge and public policy of the Atlanticist West.
As jurist Carl Schmitt said, “whoever invokes humanity is trying to deceive.” Behind humanitarian discourse lie all the most brutal and nihilistic projects of the liberal Western elites. To prove this, we just need to look at how the narratives of “humanitarian intervention” were used in Libya, Iraq, and the Balkans over the past 30 years.
Indeed, in August 2019, American political scientist Stephen Walt published an article within the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs speculating on the possibility of military actions legitimized by environmentalist discourse of defending “humanity” from “climate threats”. According to Walt, in the future, major powers might try to halt situations of environmental degradation through armed interventions in weaker countries, specifically mentioning Brazil as an example.
Less than a month later, The Guardian published an article by an author named Lawrence Douglas, in which he argued that the same logic applied to humanitarian interventions, such as the “Responsibility to Protect,” a globalist concept enshrined at the UN in 2005, should serve to legitimize the use of force against the geopolitical enemies of the Atlanticist West with a humanitarian/environmentalist veneer.
Indeed, at the event held in the Brazilian Congress, Stephen Walt’s article was specifically mentioned, along with many other pieces of evidence. It is necessary to recall, as Farinazzo did, that James Stavridis, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and former SOUTHCOM Commander, claimed that fires in the Amazon Rainforest represented a security risk for the U.S., legitimizing their intervention in Brazil. Emmanuel Macron (who was warmly welcomed by Lula in the Amazon a few months ago) and Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, have also publicly stated that the Amazon region does not really belong to Brazil, but rather is a “common good” of so-called “humanity.” David Milliband, Secretary of the Environment under Tony Blair’s government, even went so far as advocate for the privatization of the Amazon Rainforest in 2006.
All this was presented to the Foreign Relations and National Defense Committee of the Brazilian Congress with abundant evidence and sources.
If the issue of Amazon fires was the most “weaponized” against Brazil during the Bolsonaro government, now the topic that generates the most furious reactions from environmental NGOs in Brazil, as well as “concerned” comments from foreign bureaucrats, is the exploration of oil in the Equatorial Margin, as pointed out by Professor Ricardo Cabral in Congress.
This is a topic that is linked, as he pointed out, with the entire history of efforts to prevent or hinder the exploitation of Brazilian mineral and energy resources, usually under allegations of “environmental damage” or “violations of indigenous peoples’ rights” – narratives that put pressure for the loss of sovereignty over parts of Brazilian territory, which should, as the narrative goes, be under “international tutelage,” in a more refined and postmodern version of the old British privatization proposals.
The problem, as analyst Albert Caballé pointed out, however, is that the Brazilian defense industry is in crisis; a crisis that has lasted for several years already.
If until approximately the 1980s, Brazilian companies in the defense sector not only supplied most of the national military needs but were also exporters, especially to the Middle East and Africa, the neoliberal avalanche of the 1990s in a post-Cold War context led to a gradual dismantling of the sector and its denationalization, with several of the main Brazilian defense companies, such as Ares and others, coming under the control of multinational companies – almost always from the same Atlanticist countries that show interest in the “internationalization” of the Amazon.
The hypothetical scenario discussed in the Brazilian Congress for an interventionist action against Brazil, as presented by Farinazzo, mentions the possibility of a blockade of the main Brazilian ports by Atlanticist naval forces, in a sort of “anaconda strategy” (a tactic that is part of the manual of Admiral Mahan, the father of American geopolitics).
The concern of Brazilian experts and representatives specializing in defense and international relations, therefore, is that Western greed in an era of transition and geopolitical crisis could turn against Brazil – and that Brazil, if it does not quickly wake up to the contemporary risks and dangers, may not be able to face this challenge.
Deadly Chemicals Found at US ICBM Bases Threaten to Send Personnel to Early Grave
Phalus © Photo : US National Park Service
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 22.05.2024
Introduced into service in the 1970s, America’s Minuteman III ICBM arsenal has been plagued by notoriously outdated tech, including computers using eight-inch floppies until the late 2010s. Efforts to modernize the missiles have been problematic, with the Air Force forced to ‘safely terminate’ a test launch in November after detecting an ‘anomaly’.
Personnel operating current and former US ICBM bases have been exposed to cancer-causing agents known as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), the Air Force has acknowledged.
“PCBs are likely present in decommissioned Titan and Peacekeeper missile facilities that the Air Force no longer has the ability to conduct sampling in,” Air Force Global Strike Command chief General Thomas A. Bussiere said in a release put out earlier this week.
But the pale yellow-colored, viscous substances have also been found at active Minuteman III sites. Bussiere said sampling “identified the continued presence of PCBs” at Minuteman bases “despite a comprehensive removal effort in the 1990s.”
“One of the consistent concerns we’ve heard throughout the Missile Community Cancer Study is that service members, retirees, and veterans have trouble explaining their concerns over potential exposure to toxic chemicals with their healthcare providers, especially civilian providers who don’t have access to military medical database,” Air Force Global Strike Command Surgeon General Gregory Coleman said.
“While this memorandum from Global Strike Command cannot capture the specifics of any individual Airman or Guardian’s service in the missile fields, it can serve as a starting point for discussions and documentation of potential exposure,” Coleman added.
PCBs are chemical compounds used in an array of old equipment, including electronics. They were banned in the US in the late 1970s, and worldwide in the early 2000s. They share characteristics with other persistent organic pollutants, easily contaminating the local environment, including rivers, soil, and farms.
They are extremely hard to break down or degrade, with elimination difficult and costly (incineration, for example, requires heating to temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius or above).
The substances are linked to diseases impacting the central nervous system, and endocrine disruption. PCBs can also cause aggressive skin and liver cancers, and have a suspected role in the development of other ailments by weakening the immune system. They easily penetrate skin and even protective equipment, including synthetic polymers and latex.
The US is expected to spend over $131 billion to replace its Minuteman III missiles with the new Sentinel missile program. The program has faced a string of delays and cost overruns, with the first test flight expected to take place in 2026 at the earliest.
The Pentagon is expected to spend a staggering $1.5 trillion (and rising) on its multi-decade nuclear rearmament program – which was begun by the Obama administration in 2016.
State Of The Great Barrier Reef 2024
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | March 14, 2024
The Australian Environment foundation (AEF), which is a farmer friendly conservation group, has issued a new report entitled “State of the Great Barrier Reef 2024.”
Peter Ridd, the Chairman of the AEF, said the report shows that the reef is in excellent condition with record amounts of coral. “Despite all the catastrophism about hot water bleaching events in the last decade, the species most susceptible to bleaching, (the plate and staghorn corals), have exploded in number. Sadly, the impact of bleaching is routinely exaggerated by the media and some science organisations.”
“The impact of farm pollution in the Reef is negligible and all 3000 individual reefs have excellent coral. No other Australian ecosystem has shown such little change in modern times” Ridd said.
Peter Ridd added, “Australia spends roughly $500 million each year to “save the reef” but this money could be much better spent on genuine environmental problems such as control of invasive weeds and feral animals, or restoring indigenous fire practices into forests and rangeland”.
He concluded, “The public is being deceived about the reef. How this occurred is a serious issue for the reef-science community which has embraced emotion, ideology, and raw self-interest to maintain funding”.
“This new report distils a great deal of data about the reef” said Ridd “it is time that the reef science institutions confront this data rather than ignoring it and hoping nobody will notice. I challenge them to a public science duel – any time any place.”
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest reef system in the world, and scientists have been warning of its imminent demise since the 1960s.
The report is here.
Forests Are Doing Much Better Than We Think
By David Fickling | Bloomberg | January 28, 2024
Excerpts:
Take England. Forest coverage now is greater than at any time since the Black Death nearly 700 years ago, with some 1.33 million hectares of the country covered in woodlands. The UK as a whole has nearly three times as much forest as it did at the start of the 20th century.
…
It’s a similar picture in Scandinavia and Central Europe, where the spread of forests onto unproductive agricultural land, combined with the decline of wood-based industries and better management of remaining stands, has resulted in extensive regrowth since the mid-20th century. Forests cover about 15% of Denmark, compared to 2% to 3% at the start of the 19th century.
…
China’s forests have increased by about 607,000 square kilometers since 1992, a region the size of Ukraine. The European Union has added an area equivalent to Cambodia to its woodlands, while the US and India have together planted forests that would cover Bangladesh in an unbroken canopy of leaves.
…
Even tropical deforestation has slowed drastically since the 1990s, possibly because the rise of plantation timber is cutting the need to clear primary forests.
…
Remarkably, this may not be the first time human activities caused an expansion of the world’s forests. The devastating population declines caused by war and disease after the European colonization of the Americas may have caused a downturn in global temperatures between the 16th and 19th centuries, according to one 2019 analysis. With their populations reduced to about 10% of previous numbers, Indigenous people were no longer able to maintain agricultural systems based on clearing land with fire. As a result, 558,000 square kilometers of new woodlands grew, sufficient to lock away about 27 billion tons of CO2. …
The CO2 taken up by trees narrowly exceeded the amount released by deforestation.
…
Nor is global afforestation to date caused mainly by environmental imperatives. Indeed, in much of the world, it has been the rise of fossil fuels that turned the corner on deforestation almost a century ago, as industries turned to coal, oil and gas to produce heat and energy in place of wood.
…
Still, we should celebrate our success in slowing a pattern of human deforestation that’s been going on for nearly 100,000 years. Nothing about the damage we do to our planet is inevitable. With effort, it may even be reversible.
David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy and commodities. He has worked for Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.
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Prominent American “Anti-Racist” Jews Are Funding Racist Gangs Attacking Arabs In Israel
By Eric Striker | National Justice | May 8, 2021
American Jews are bankrolling Zionist paramilitary groups that have been assaulting and terrorizing random Arabs on the streets of East Jerusalem.
Two weeks ago, 100s of Israelis chanted “Death To Arabs” as they attacked non-Jewish men, women and children during a demonstration organized by Lehava.
Lehava describes itself as a group militantly opposed to race-mixing and openly calls for the killing and expulsion of Christians and Muslims alike.
According to a recent investigation into the groups funding, a number of wealthy Jews who support pro-Israel and liberal causes in the United States have been funding Lehava’s activities.
Two names that stand out are Adam Milstein, a real estate speculator, and the Falic family, which controls all the duty free shops that operate in US airports. … continue
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