Worst Climate Stories of the Week (You’re Gonna Need A Bigger Subsidy)

This week’s climate stories combine equal parts desperation, failure, and a call for more taxpayer money to paper over it all.

The climate today is somewhat reminiscient of that of the 1970s. In the classic 1975 movie, Jaws, the police chief and a marine biologist charter a boat to go hunting for the great white shark that has terrorized the fictional Amity Island beach resort. When they finally find the shark, they realize the massive size of the killer, prompting the police chief to say to the boat captain, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

This week’s insane climate stories harken back to that classic line. One can almost hear beleaguered climate warriors, faced with the ubiquitous failures of their subsidies, saying through the cigarette (or vape . . .  or blunt . . . ) clamped in their mouth: “We’re gonna need a bigger subsidy.” The EV failure section alone will cost American taxpayers billions.

Jaws takes place during a hot summer as vacationers seek relief at the beach. It reminds us that summer has happened every year (at least since the 1970s), and it always gets hot. Nevertheless, the climate cultists insist that summertime weather indicates a boiling planet, and we must do something now.

(Don’t miss last week’s crazy climate stories: Killing Owls to Save Mother Earth)

The devil of that “something” is in the details, as we’ve repeatedly documented in this column. The beat goes on this week. Offshore wind has no hope of meeting the Biden administration’s targets, while our exploding EVs segment has taken on a life of its own this week. A climate scientist blatantly lies about hurricanes in a shockingly mendacious diatribe. To make the non-existent hurricane crisis go away, power companies have begun adjusting “smart thermostats” upward during heat waves, without the approval of their customers.

We do have some good news this week, as a climate lawsuit against Big Oil has hit a road block, and the earth hasn’t boiled over as the climate cultists claim.

Let’s get to it.

Biden’s Targets for Wind Power Look Even More Unrealistic

The American Clean Power Association (ACP) released a report this week showing the Biden administration will fall far short of its offshore wind goals, despite throwing gobs of taxpayer money at the industry. ACP reports, under the best of conditions, offshore wind will only reach about 14 gigawatts of production by 2030, less than half the 30 GW the Biden administration promised. They might or might not get there sometime in the 30s. This failure will have cost the American taxpayer around $65 billion by 2030, according to the report.

Maybe if we throw more money at it, wind power will suddenly make sense?

Climate Scientist Goes Full Biden, Engages Compulsive Liar Mode

Never one to shy away from the spotlight, atmospheric scientist Katherine Hayhoe made the rounds on social media this week. She has repeatedly claimed global warming will make hurricanes more intense, despite a lack of actually more intense hurricanes.

Judith Curry would like a word.

Anyway, after Hurricane Beryl became the earliest Category 5 storm in the modern human observational record, Hayhoe said in an interview that climate change had made it more intense. Her mendacity went off the charts in that one. She then responded to a snarky comment on social media with more snark and fabrications of her own.

Hayhoe has failed to acknowledge several key points about the 2024 tropical cyclone season. First, we set another record in the modern human observational period, when the entire Pacific side of the globe failed to produce a single hurricane, monsoon, or tropical storm for the entire month of June. Second, the Atlantic tropics have so far been remarkably inactive for hurricane season (which began June 1), with only three named storms, two of which lasted mere hours before dissipating.

Even Beryl weakened and had lower than anticipated effects by the time it made landfall.

Like many alarmists who engage more in scientism than science, Hayhoe pushes her cherry-picked facts while ignoring the inconvenient things that detract from the hysteria of her point.

Hey, Who Turned Off My Air Conditioning?

The good folks in the Pacific Northwest aren’t used to extended heat waves, but they’ve been known to happen from time to time. Thank goodness for air conditioning, right?

Not if Portland General Electric has anything to say about it. And, turns out, they do. Many PGE customers have enrolled in the Smart Thermostat Program, hoping they can contribute to the healing of Mother Earth. But when it gets hot, PGE puts your thermostat at 78 during the hottest part of the day. Suddenly the dedication to fighting global warming melts away.

During the hottest part of the day, 5-8pm, PGE will remotely adjust your thermostat. But don’t worry, they’ve “pre-cooled” your house in the hour prior, so you probably won’t die of heat stroke. If you manually lower the temperature, you’ll lose out on the promised bill credits in the Smart Thermostat Program.

One wonders how much extra power will be consumed when all those fans turn on and negate the consumption reductions in the program.

This Week In Exploding—and Imploding—EVs

This might be the best climate story this week. Electric vehicle manufacturer Fisker recently went bankrupt, and has now begun to liquidate its remaining fleet. They will now let go of all their unsold EVs—for as low as $2,500. The original sticker price was $58,000.

Maybe their EV sales failed because too many of them tend to explode. A Tesla caught fire at a charging station this week in Pennsylvania, creating an unintentionally funny picture of a dead Tesla.

Meanwhile, a town in Georgia has begun requiring fire blankets at all EV charging stations. This comes on the recommendation of their fire department:

Deputy Fire Chief and Fire Marshall Alex Fortner told the council the measure was a “proactive attempt” to limit the damage if an electric vehicle catches on fire. According to Fortner, cars with lithium-ion batteries can need up to 30,000 gallons of water if they catch fire. That’s 60 times as many as the average vehicle with a combustion engine. Fire blankets can be used to quickly cut off oxygen and safely extinguish any flames.

Not to be outdone in the exploding EV space, Amazon has seen its own crisis. Its electric delivery vans keep “mysteriously” catching fire.

EVs keep exploding, and we’re here for all of it.

Finally, some good news . . .

Big Oil Gets Lawsuit Thrown Out

David Blackmon writes at his Substack this week about the climate change lawsuit filed against Big Oil by the Baltimore City Council:

In a ruling that could impact dozens of legal actions in what has become a coordinated lawfare effort to damage the US oil and gas industry, a City Circuit Judge in Baltimore, MD tossed out a local government’s lawsuit that sought to hold oil companies financially liable for alleged impacts of climate change on Thursday.

In a rare win for basic sense (F.K.A. common sense) over malicious lawfare, the judge ruled the lawsuit went far beyond the scope of state law.

This Summer Is Decidedly Mild, Climate Alarmists Get Hysterical Anyway

If you only consume the mainstream media, you’d never know that this summer has seen temperatures far lower than normal. Local heat waves and destructive storms have dominated news broadcasts. No mention of the overall global or even continental trends. Over at PJ Media, Rick Moran made note of it:

. . . according to the scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), several indices of temperature measurements in the United States show that temperatures have actually been considerably lower than the highest temperatures on record.

“NOAA’s June 2024 Climate Data Shows No ‘Record High’ U.S. Maximum Temperature Anomaly or Absolute Temperatures Occurred Despite Flawed Alarmist Claims Portrayed in Media Political Hype,” reports Larry Hamlin on the climate website Watts Up With That.

NOAA‘s June 2024 Contiguous U.S. USCRN maximum temperature anomaly data clearly indicates that not only is there no established trend of increasing maximum temperature anomalies during the period starting in 2005 but also the June 2024 anomaly value (2.84 degrees F highlighted in red) is below the prior highest June value of 3.91 degrees F in 2021 as well as far below the highest anomaly value ever recorded during this period of 7.72 degrees F that occurred in March 2012.

It’s been very hot for tens of millions of people. But the “record” temperatures are comparing apples to oranges. The calendar day “records” are meaningless. What matters are averages over 30 days or a year. And the data says that the climate hysterics are full of it.

Yeah, we know. We keep telling you that.

Learn more: How the Left’s Global Warming Ideology Wrecked Science—And How to Stop It