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Worries About ‘Existential Threat’ From Climate Change Suddenly Put On Hold For Paris Olympics

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By DAVID BLACKMON

 

The U.S. Olympic team will be supplied with room air conditioning units, joining other countries like Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and Italy.

Organizers of the Summer Olympics Games to be held in Paris next month were hoping to force the games to be held sans air conditioning — what a wonderful virtue signal that would send to the climate-alarmed public!

The plan, as USA Today reported, was to force all event venues and athlete housing units to rely on a geothermal cooling system devised by the French. But, you know, it can get hot in Paris in the summer, and participating athletes and countries had some concerns about it.

So, despite the grand, centrally planned net-zero initiatives financed by trillions of debt-funded dollars and euros and pounds, many countries are planning to keep their athletes calm, collected and properly cooled with electricity-hogging room a/c units.

Note that the list of countries above includes some that are led by the world’s most aggressive and notorious climate scolds.

German leaders in this century have succeeded in largely destroying what had been the industrial powerhouse of Europe at the altar of climate alarmism, investing billions of debt-funded euros in a Quixotic attempt to power their society with windmills. That plan has been so successful to date that last winter, in a desperate attempt to avoid power blackouts, the government there resorted to reactivating mothballed coal plants and tore down a wind development to expand a domestic coal mining operation.

In the UK, the Tories — ostensibly the “conservatives” in Britain — now face an electoral wipeout of unprecedented proportions due in part to their buying whole hog into climate alarmist dogma.

In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose public approval rating would make President Joe Biden blush, faces a similar fate for similar reasons in national elections that will take place in 2025.

The governments of Australia and New Zealand, in nominally “conservative” or “liberal” regimes alike, have also embarked well down the net-zero path to deindustrialization.

Yet every one of these countries will be shipping out hundreds of energy consuming, greenhouse-gas-emitting air conditioners to Paris.

No national government has invested more time and more debt-funded dollars in virtue signaling and lecturing the public about climate change in recent years than the Biden regime. To hear President Joe Biden Biden, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Climate Envoy John Podesta, former Climate Envoy John Kerry and Vice President Kamala Harris tell it, a 1.5-degree rise in temperature is in fact an “existential threat,” one that requires us to saddle our great-grandchildren with trillions of more dollars in unsustainable debt to address right now, or — wait for it — we will all die!

But hey, we can’t have our Olympic athletes suffering in rooms where the Paris geothermal cooling system might only get temperatures down to an unbearable 78 degrees Fahrenheit, so it is imperative that the United States join the room a/c caravan across the Pond to gay Paree.

That is basically what USA Today quotes U.S. Olympic and Paralympic CEO Sarah Hirshland as saying: “We have great respect for the work that’s been done by the Paris organizing committee in particular and their focus on sustainability,” Hirshland said. “As you can imagine, this is a period of time in which consistency and predictability is critical for Team USA’s performance. In our conversations with athletes, this was a very high priority and something that the athletes felt was a critical component in their performance capability.”

But wait: If climate change is truly an existential threat to all mankind, shouldn’t the desires of a few thousand Olympics athletes to stay cool in their rooms simply be ignored? For the “greater good” and all that stuff?

After all, that is what the central governments in every one of these countries do whenever public opinion disapproves of their policy choices. Why should this become an exception?

The global religious belief that mankind can control the climate like it has a thermostat we can turn up and down at will is an example of unbridled hubris that is unrivalled in human history. That hubris is only exceeded by the rank hypocrisy practiced by the loudest and most visible of the religion’s adherents.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/PBS)

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Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ defense shield must be built now, Lt. Gen. warns

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MXM logo  MxM News

Quick Hit:

Lt. Gen. Trey Obering (Ret.), former director of the Missile Defense Agency, is calling on Congress and the Department of Defense to move quickly in support of President Donald Trump’s vision for a next-generation missile defense system—dubbed the “Golden Dome.” In a Fox News op-ed, Obering argues that a constellation of up to 2,000 satellite interceptors could defend against modern threats from China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran at a fraction of the cost of today’s ground-based systems.

Key Details:

  • The Golden Dome initiative will be presented to President Trump following his executive order mandating the development of advanced national missile defense.

  • Obering says a space-based system, enabled by AI and peer-to-peer networking, could intercept missiles earlier in their trajectory, significantly enhancing U.S. deterrence capabilities.

  • Estimated cost for the full satellite constellation would be less than the price of today’s 44 ground interceptors and global radar network.

Diving Deeper:

In a March 31 op-ed for Fox News, retired Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, who directed the Missile Defense Agency under President George W. Bush, laid out a detailed argument for why President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield is both technologically feasible and strategically necessary. “We can do this — and we must,” Obering wrote, emphasizing the urgency of the moment.

According to Obering, the current U.S. missile defense architecture—reliant on ground-based interceptors and radar systems—faces serious limitations in light of the increasingly sophisticated missile technologies being developed by U.S. adversaries. “Our existing missile-defense system cannot easily defeat some of our adversaries’ more modern, sophisticated weapons,” he noted.

The “Golden Dome” proposal envisions a network of up to 2,000 satellites in low Earth orbit, operating as both sensors and interceptors. The concept, which builds on Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and the shelved “Brilliant Pebbles” program, is now achievable thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, satellite production, and space-based communications. “Each satellite has the knowledge of every other satellite,” Obering explained. “They all serve as both threat sensors and hit-to-kill interceptors.”

Obering pointed to real-world applications of this model in Ukraine, where a peer-to-peer software system—built using concepts from Uber—has helped the Ukrainian military effectively target Russian positions. A similar concept could be applied to satellite-based missile defense. “The networking concept has already proven its effectiveness on the battlefield in Ukraine,” he said.

Importantly, Obering stressed that while no missile shield is perfect, the deterrent power of such a system would be undeniable. “The capability and capacity now exists to defeat single and multiple missile launches, thereby creating strategic deterrence — or ‘peace through strength,’ in the words of both Reagan and Trump,” he wrote.

Cost is another key factor. Obering argued that this next-gen system would come in at a lower price than the 44 ground interceptors currently deployed in Alaska and California. He cited SpaceX’s Starlink, which already has over 7,000 satellites in orbit, as proof of concept for rapid and scalable deployment. “For a defense system charged with safeguarding countless lives and trillions of dollars in assets, this would be money well spent,” he said.

He also warned that bureaucratic delays must not slow the project. “We cannot allow unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles to stifle our progress,” Obering urged. He called on Congress to expedite confirmations of key defense leaders and fully fund the Golden Dome initiative, with the Missile Defense Agency as the lead coordinating body.

With China racing ahead in artificial intelligence and space defense, Obering concluded with a stark warning: “Golden Dome must be built first; the alternative is too terrible to contemplate.”

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Saskatchewan becomes first Canadian province to fully eliminate carbon tax

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Saskatchewan has become the first Canadian province to free itself entirely of the carbon tax.

On March 27, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced the removal of the provincial industrial carbon tax beginning April 1, boosting the province’s industry and making Saskatchewan the first carbon tax free province.

“The immediate effect is the removal of the carbon tax on your Sask Power bills, saving Saskatchewan families and small businesses hundreds of dollars a year. And in the longer term, it will reduce the cost of other consumer products that have the industrial carbon tax built right into their price,” said Moe.

Under Moe’s direction, Saskatchewan has dropped the industrial carbon tax which he says will allow Saskatchewan to thrive under a “tariff environment.”

“I would hope that all of the parties running in the federal election would agree with those objectives and allow the provinces to regulate in this area without imposing the federal backstop,” he continued.

The removal of the tax is estimated to save Saskatchewan residents up to 18 cents a liter in gas prices.

The removal of the tax will take place on April 1, the same day the consumer carbon tax will reduce to 0 percent under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s direction. Notably, Carney did not scrap the carbon tax legislation: he just reduced its current rate to zero. This means it could come back at any time.

Furthermore, while Carney has dropped the consumer carbon tax, he has previously revealed that he wishes to implement a corporation carbon tax, the effects of which many argued would trickle down to all Canadians.

The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) celebrated Moe’s move, noting that the carbon tax was especially difficult on farmers.

“It puts our farming community and our business people in rural municipalities at a competitive disadvantage, having to pay this and compete on the world stage,” he continued.

“We’ve got a carbon tax on power — and that’s going to be gone now — and propane and natural gas and we use them more and more every year, with grain drying and different things in our farming operations,” he explained.

“I know most producers that have grain drying systems have three-phase power. If they haven’t got natural gas, they have propane to fire those dryers. And that cost goes on and on at a high level, and it’s made us more noncompetitive on a world stage,” Huber decalred.

The carbon tax is wildly unpopular and blamed for the rising cost of living throughout Canada. Currently, Canadians living in provinces under the federal carbon pricing scheme pay $80 per tonne.

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