More and more City Councilors want to spend your money to stop climate change. We know of Denton, Cook, Bagley and likely the rest of the 603 Forward gang: McEachern and Kelley. That alone is a majority.
Do local measures they advocate really have a hope of curing a global issue?
Higher flood waters? Rising temperatures? Increasing severity of storms?
City Councilors want to install electric vehicle (EV) charging stations around town.
Allow solar panels to homes in the Historic District, thereby defacing a City treasure.
Create another expensive City utility, Community Power, that duplicates what’s already available publicly.
No Panacea
City Council, in the quest of “just doing something,” would have you believe these measures can stop climate change. But it is a waste of money.
We have yet to see any cost/benefit analysis that would convince us these or other measures would actually save the planet or even Portsmouth.
These proposed measures carry costs. They are either direct costs, where the City spends our taxpayer money, or indirect costs, such as solar panels and new window designs which impact property values. These measures make energy more expensive and are very inflationary.
But the effectiveness of these measures doesn’t amount to a hill of beans beyond the value of virtue signaling.
Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth)
There’s a new movie that raises cogent and relevant questions about the validity of “climate change.” It is called Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth). The scientists in the movie would agree that the above efforts are a waste of money.
It is telling that in the last few days the left has tried to cancel this movie, saying “it’s full of crap.”
Now just stop for a moment and question the underlying assumptions of climate change. Of course, climate change is real. Our climate is always changing.
How else could you explain the fact that Portsmouth was under a mile of ice only 20,000 years ago? Or that ocean levels were enough lower to lay bare even the outer continental shelf, making it a place where rhododendra lived 20,000 years ago, 200 feet below today’s sea water level?
But laying the blame for today’s “climate change” at the doorstep of human activities or carbon dioxide (CO2) or the burning of fossil fuels is a myth. Examine the science. The actual science.
Go to https://www.climatethemovie.net/ to see the movie. It was released on March 21. 2024 and is available free. It was written and directed by UK filmmaker Martin Durkin and produced by Tom Nelson. It may seem global in scope, but it responds directly to those who want Portsmouth to spend money to stop climate change.
Movie Details
The movie itself is nearly an hour and twenty minutes long.
The first 5 parts (or 42 minutes) focus on the actual science. This is the most critical part right now.
Bottom line: CO2 does not drive climate change. Rural temperatures, outside of urban heat islands, have not risen more than 1 degree Celsius in 350 years.
The rest of the film investigates the societal changes that now create climate alarmism, cries for global government control and expensive and prohibitive regulations.
The film is divided into 12 sections as shown below:
0:00 Introduction (Issues regarding the corruption of science, assault on individual freedom, money, control centralized authority)
6:48 The Science, Part I: climate history, temperature records, we’re in an ice age
22:28 The Science, Part II – CO2: temperature rises before CO2, model failures.
31:57 The Science, Part III – Nature: if not CO2, then solar and galactic drivers.
37:06 The Science, Part IV – Extreme Weather: no evidence of worsening results.
42:29 Climate and Consensus: effort starts in 1980s to fund research and opinion
47:21 The Climate Bandwagon: post-1995, create alarm, pass green regs and taxes
55:24 The Politics of Climate: centralized gov’t for control, reshapes consumption.
1:03:27 Climate vs. Freedom: climate change drives more gov’t power and control.
1:07:39 Climate versus the People: condemns capitalism, aims to limit prosperity.
1:10:54 Climate and the Poor: must limit rising stds of living. Stop 3rd world growth.
1:18:57 Credits
The movie involves many interviews with numerous world-renowned scientists. Many of these researchers are older and may be retired. They are leaders in physics or meteorology, or other relevant fields of climate science. Importantly, the older scientists no longer worry about attracting grant money. That means they can speak their minds.
What they have to say threatens an entire industry funding climate change research and manufacturing. There is tremendous resistance to hearing this message.
There are younger scientists who are also interviewed. For those in this group who have expressed questions or doubts about CO2 driving climate change, they have suffered due to ostracization or a career-altering termination of research grants from government or international sources.
Disturbing Trends of Centralized Control
The latter part of the film explores how the focus on CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere becomes the perfect foil for climate activists to demand greater centralization of control over all human activities.
But if CO2 does not drive climate change, then this effort to limit the use of fossil fuel, limit trade especially with third world countries and restrict human consumption, the growth of prosperity and wealth creation falls apart.
It is no wonder that the regulation and taxation of carbon is such a perfect foil for climate change advocates. To challenge this structure means striking at the heart of years of alarm and fear as carefully nurtured by these advocates.
The public senses that climate change is a canard. Look at the underwhelming sales of electric vehicles. Or the slow adoption of green energy sources coupled with the refurbishing and re-starting of nuclear generating facilities. Or the success of political parties in Europe which fight restrictions on farmers or question the climate change agenda.
This Science Is Not Settled
As any scientist will tell you, science is never settled, not the least of which is climate science. Climate science is in its infancy and is rife with promotional advocates. The movie, though, challenges many of the accepted beliefs held by politicians and global elites. One can now see that trying to link rising CO2 concentrations to rising temperatures as part of a charge of climate change is ill-founded.
Stop Wasting Our Money
Given such limits, committing vast amounts of money to arrest the rise of CO2 is foolish. The City Council needs to wake up and get off the climate change bandwagon, especially before it bankrupts us all. No more charging stations, limit the installation of solar panels especially in historically sensitive areas and stop subsidizing community power and green energy. These are a waste of money.
