The Week's Worst Climate Stories (Dead Salmon and Glacier Curtains)

The more climate problems they try to solve, the worse things get.

Have you ever noticed how the climate solutions environmentalists come up with cause all sorts of other problems while threatening life on Earth as we know it? Environmental regulations lead to ever-more massive wildfires, which they then blame on global warming. Scientists want to shoot junk into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from the earth. Politicians limit affordable, reliable energy and stick us with “green” energy that doesn’t do half of what they say it does, while the processes to produce it cause huge pollution problems. Conservationists returning habitat to its “natural” state, untouched by mankind, leads to unintended die-offs of fragile species. Hysterics create a scary headline out of the smallest of environmental effects, hoping to shame folks for simply breathing because it hurts the climate.

All the while, electric vehicles (EVs) keep on failing. At least there’s still something we can rely on in this crazy world.

Did you miss last week’s column? EVS ARE THE GIFT THAT KEEP ON TAKING

This week, scientists want to put another blanket on another glacier; a western dam got demolished to save salmon, only to kill hundreds of thousands of… salmon; asthma causes global warming; and we have more proof that EVs suck.

Plus, we give a shout-out to an organization doing what it can to correct the record on climate, and a whole lot of other topics, and in our Good News segment, Texas sued the EPA while the United States keeps setting petroleum production records.

Let’s get to it.

Pull the Curtain on Common Sense

There’s this big glacier in Antarctica. Like, really big. So big, the climate hysterics call it a “Doomsday Glacier” because if it breaks off, it would add a lot of water to the ocean. Which isn’t already there, but it could be. Which would be bad.

So, the Thwaites Glacier is the size of Florida, and it holds back the west Antarctica ice sheet. The ocean currents there sometimes work to erode the thickness of that glacier. These currents are natural, and the glacier has thickened and thinned over the years. But if the currents get too warm, the “Doomsday Glacier” could collapse, or break off, and the hysterics tell us that could cause a sea level rise of up to ten feet.

Regardless of the unlikelihood of all those things happening, a glaciologist says we need to protect the Thwaites Glacier with a giant curtain that could thwart the ocean currents. Price tag? A cool $50 billion. He wants to “anchor” the curtain on the sea floor, after rejecting a more permanent wall idea:

Initially, Moore envisioned a wall to keep the currents from reaching the glacier, but settled on a curtain as a more reasonable approach. “Any intervention should be something that you can revert if you have second thoughts,” Moore explained.

Never mind the complete lack of evidence that climate change has caused more rapid melting of the glacier. SOMEBODY NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING. Now pay up.

Torpedo the Dams, Full Speed Ahead

In case you’ve never heard of the Klamath River and the fish habitat issues that activists have pushed for decades, here’s a thirty-second history lesson (see here for a more complete geological history). An ancient, shallow lake in southern Oregon and northern California has slowly been shrinking for around 10,000 years. Native Americans and white settlers have described this shallow, marshy lake as unfit for animal or human consumption for generations, due to the poor water quality. It is choked with sediments and nutrients, which make it foul to drink, but ideal for irrigating crops.

Upper Klamath Lake drains into the Klamath River, which meanders slowly to the southwest, hitting the Pacific Ocean south of Crescent City. Power companies installed a series of dams in the lower part of the river to provide hydroelectric power, while upper river dams created irrigation reservoirs for farmers. The United States Bureau of Reclamation created homestead lottery draws for veterans returning from World War I and World War II who had experience in agriculture.

Fast forward to the 2000s, when natural drought cycles caused low water conditions in the basin, threatening suckerfish species now protected by the Endangered Species Act.

A Sucker Isn’t Born Every Minute

Government bureaucrats cut the water supply to the Klamath Basin farmers, to keep the rivers full in an attempt to save the suckers and the historic salmon runs. Activists blamed the dams for the lack of salmon on the river, without taking into consideration their life cycles in the ocean and the possibility of overfishing. The suckers have never recovered, and nobody can explain why. After a decades-long fight, the enviros finally won the right to breach the dams … which led to an enormous release of toxic goo that had built up behind the dams. Wildlife got stuck in the mud and died horrible deaths. Nearly a million young chinook salmon died after release from a hatchery

The reservoirs, now empty, have become huge pits of mud, silt, and decaying algae, causing the river to turn brown and stink. Large numbers of other dead fish like perch and bass lay on the banks, and some scientists wonder if the salmon intended for the new habitat will ever be able to get upriver through the muddy water.

All this after the breach of just one dam. Officials will breach three others later this summer. They assure us they have a plan to restore all that habitat.

Bang up job, everyone.

Stop Using Your Inhaler If You Love Mother Earth

Asthmatics of the world, unite! The next great frontier in stopping the release of manmade greenhouse gases is your inhaler. The war on human breathing continues.

Reading the article, the alternatives—a soft mist inhaler, or a dry powder inhaler—generally come with a greater cost, and lower effectiveness. You’ll die of an asthma attack, but at least you’ll have saved Mother Earth, so quit complaining.

Consult Your Doctor If You Suffer From EV

At this rate, news of high performance among electric vehicles (EVs) would come as a bigger shock than reports of underperformance. This week, reports surfaced proving EV manufacturers have engaged in the Volkswagen strategy of overpromising. (A few years back, VW got in trouble for greatly overstating the mileage attained by its diesel models, resulting in governmental fines.) A car magazine tested a wide range of EVs under real life conditions and found—shocker—the range could be up to one-third lower than claimed.

Just the (Climate) Facts, Ma’am

A quick shout-out to an organization doing yeoman’s work in debunking BS in the mainstream media. JustFacts.com bills itself as a research institute “dedicated to publishing facts about public policies and teaching research skills.” They have a fun series of daily quizzes to test the reader’s knowledge on various news headlines. One of the questions this week concerned water at the North Pole:

Beyond recent years, when was the last era when the North Pole had expanses of unfrozen water?

Correct Answer
Decades ago

Correct Answer Rate 50%

Tell Me More

In the summer of 2000, a Harvard oceanographer saw a mile-wide stretch of open ocean at the North Pole and informed the New York Times, which ran a front-page article claiming that the “last time scientists can be certain the pole was awash in water was more than 50 million years ago.” The Associated Press and other media outlets quickly spread this story before the Times issued a correction stating that it “misstated the normal conditions of the sea ice” and that “a clear spot has probably opened at the pole before.” In reality, such expanses have been documented via reports and pictures (see the link below) ever since the 1950s when mankind developed the technology to visit the North Pole during the summer. With total disregard for these facts, a slew of media outlets reported in July 2013 that a “lake” formed at the North Pole due to “unprecedented melting.”

This site does thorough work researching and reporting the truth behind the headlines.

Good News: The Petroleum Empire Strikes Back

This week, the State of Texas sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) after it published rules on methane. Attorney General Ken Paxton said, “the EPA is once again trying to seize regulatory authority that Congress has not granted.” The EPA wants to ban flaring, the routine practice of burning associated gases like methane in the petroleum extraction process.

Meanwhile, more data has emerged showing the United States has set new records in oil production. In fact, the U.S. now produces more crude oil than any country ever has, according to Bjorn Lomborg. So much for the Green New Deal.

(READ MORE: How the Left’s Global Warming Ideology Wrecked Science—and How to Stop It)