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GOVERNOR NEWSOM’S BUDGET SOLUTION

January 26, 2024 By: bob Category: Culture, Humor, In the News, On Bob's Mind, Something To Think About

California Governor Gavin Newsom

Facing a potential State Budget Deficit of some 68 Billion (with a B) Dollars, which the good governor claims is really only half of that, I am hearing rumblings that he plans to resurrect a “hush-hush” Administration Plan from back in 2017 to increase tax revenues and in the process help in the war on Global Climate Change.  I first wrote about this plan back in November 2017 but understand that it was then put on hold due to the difficulty in finding, training and hiring willing Monitors to implement and enforce compliance.  With a new Artificial Intelligence DNA Serum perfected by Pfizer, it is now possible to put enforcement operatives in the field and the aforementioned plan is now viable.  Details of the plan follow in my reprint of the article below:

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FAIR SHARE TAXES AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE

November 11, 2017

I have information from reliable but nameless and secret sources that the State of California is very near announcement of a two fold plan for a Fair Share Universal Tax to help fund the War on Global Climate Change.

First, in recognition that exhaling releases carbon dioxide gas which is a contributor to Global Climate Change,  every resident or visitor to the State of California will be required to have a micro chip implant that will both monitor and report each time they exhale to the State of California.

This data will be forwarded to the Franchise Tax Board who will calculate the tax due and be responsible for collecting the scheduled tax from “Breathers”.  At the time of this writing the tax rate being considered is one tenth of a cent per exhale.  This may seem  a paltry sum until one calculates that the average adult respiratory rate is about 15 times per minute or 900 times per hour.  Do a little math and the average cost of exhaling in California will be about 90 cents an hour or $21.60 a day.

This tax can be avoided by simply no longer exhaling and residents and visitors can take comfort in the fact that inhaling is still free.  At least for now.

For the Second phase of this battle consideration is being given to the fact that methane is also a contributor to Global Climate Change and it is the responsibility of all of us to pay our Fair Share Tax in the battle to monitor and reduce the release of this gas into California’s breathable air resources.

It is also a scientific fact that flatulence is a major contributor to the release of methane into the atmosphere. Therefore, California is creating a new agency to monitor and tax the unwanted release of this gas.  To fund this Board and its employees a new source of revenue will be created through the establishment of a Flatulence Air Resource Tax. (Pseudonym FARTax)

Under development is a new monitoring device to be worn by all residents and visitors on the rear upper portion of the thigh which will sense, tabulate and report to the Board all releases of methane gas by the wearer.

The Board will then forward this information to the California Franchise Tax Board who will be responsible for billing and collecting the approved tax.  At this writing a rate of $1.00 per release is under consideration.  Think of it as an exhaust gas tax.

Taxpayers can avoid this tax by simply not releasing any methane gas through the monitored process.

The State agency for this Board is reporting some difficulty in recruiting, hiring and training workers who will be responsible for checking and monitoring individuals at random to be sure they are wearing the methane release and sound monitoring device and that it is working properly.

Formal announcement of this new Fair Share Tax and implementation of monitoring should be released through the media within the next 60 days.

All tax rates are subject to review and increase depending on Battlefield Assessment Reports from the ongoing War against Global Climate Change and subject to review and correction by former Vice President Al Gore.

What could possibly go wrong?

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The time has come to implement and enforce this important new law to save California from Bankruptcy!

Bob Bandy – January 2024

“CONRAD BLOWHARD” STRIKES AGAIN

January 12, 2024 By: bob Category: Culture, Humor, In the News, On Bob's Mind, Something To Think About

 

photo – California Globe – January 12, 2024

 

SOMETIMES IT IS TOO EASY

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP

Back in March 2023 I wrote a spoof article titled: SPIN DOCTORS – LIPSTICK ON LIES.  Conrad Blowhard makes his appearance in an excerpt from my article sub-headlined: “A SPIN CITY NARRATIVE” and my article follows these excerpts from The California Globe article by Kathy Grimes titled:

 

$478,000 Per Unit: Homeless ‘Tiny’ Apartments Now Open in Sacramento – Cost to build – $1,707 per square foot

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg proudly announced “Sacramento’s historic Capitol Park Hotel reopens this week as St. Clare at Capitol Park, a permanent supportive housing complex for people experiencing homelessness.”

Calling the state’s homeless vagrant population “unhoused” has justified spending billions of taxpayer dollars on housing for the homeless in lovely new apartments, renovated hotels, and tiny homes.

The Globe first reported on this fishy project in 2019:

The city just closed a triage shelter for the vagrants living on the streets. Mayor Steinberg is pinning his hopes on the Capitol Park Hotel which was used for decades as housing for low-income disabled adults. The city is kicking them out, and renovating the hotel for $23 million. Steinberg says it will have 180 beds for homeless by August.

As one neighbor said in response to Steinberg’s press conference, “these are the drug addicts and mentally ill who refuse the city services. To call them ‘homeless’ is an insult to those that are truly down on their luck. They are ‘vagrants, ‘criminals,’ ‘druggies,’ and ‘junkies’ who have chosen this lifestyle.”

Truer words could not be spoken……

……….Steinberg spoke of the “homeless” without addressing their open lawlessness, drug dealing, theft, people masturbating in public, shooting up heroin in the open, soliciting drugs and prostitution in public, and defecating and urinating on streets in front of local businesses. It’s not a pretty picture. According to Mayor Steinberg, “it’s a housing crisis.”

The “housing crisis” and the “unhoused” are apparently worth a really large bounty per head to the City of Sacramento – they are the “facilitators” for the hotel and apartment renovations, bringing billions to the cities in California from the federal and state governments.

That “housing complex for people experiencing homelessness” ballooned up per unit cost by 2020 to $445,000 each. Mercy Housing began the project with a $34 million price to convert the Downtown Sacramento building’s 180 hotel rooms into 134 studio units of about 280 square feet each. The project grew to a $64 million project, that we know of at this point.

That’s $478,ooo per 280 square foot room –  $1,707 per square foot. The average square foot cost of real estate right now in Sacramento is about $300 to $400 per square foot.

The complete California Globe article is available on their website:  THECALIFORNIAGLOBE.COM

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My original article excerpted from something I wrote back in March 2023 follows:

A SPIN CITY NARRATIVE

Conrad Blowhard is the Mayor of Spin City, California.  His city has become infested with homeless encampments and vagrants numbering in the thousands.  To some this would seem a problem but Mayor Blowhard sees an opportunity.  

He will convince his City Council that in an effort to help the homeless and decrease their numbers on the cities streets and alleys he would like them to pass a funding bill in the amount of 80 Million Dollars with the proceeds dedicated to renovating a dilapidated, nearly abandoned hotel down on “Skid Row” and convert it’s 80 rooms into housing for the homeless.  The City Council passes the funding request and pats themselves on the back for “caring” about the homeless.

Closed bidding contracts are let out to major contractors who are supporters and donors to the Mayor for the work to be done.  A ceremonial event is held at the Foggy Bottom Hotel with the Mayor swinging a sledge hammer through a faded door of a shoddy 200 square foot room in front of live television cameras.  Everybody applauds.

Work begins.  Some effort is made to rid the building of most of the rats, termites and other vermin which infest it.  The leaking roof is patched.  Contractors workers “freshen up” the rooms with new paint, carpet, updated (cheap) fixtures from China and new window coverings.  Cost per room innovated is $400,000.  In addition, the hotel gets a new name:  “NEW BEGINNING’S” and a single fresh coat of exterior paint. 

Grand Opening Day arrives.  Brass Bands and Ribbon Cutting.  Mayor Blowhard and City Council members make grandiose speeches about how they have solved the cities Homeless Crisis.  A few ragged homeless people are seen entering the building to take occupancy of their renovated 200 square foot “apartments”.

The Mayor’s handpicked contractors, sub-contractors and suppliers go out and spend their profits on new boats, sports cars and luxury vacations but not forgetting to “tithe” back some of those profits to the Majors campaign re-election coffers.

The 80 “new” tenants of the once dilapidated hotel settle in and begin the task of de-renovation on the hotel to turn it back into a Skid Row Manor.  

The whole process is “spun” as a huge success and praise and credit is layered on all who participated in the project.  What could possibly go wrong.  Housing was provided, at least temporarily, for 80 homeless people for only 80 Million Dollars.  “WINK – WINK”.

Bob Bandy – March 2023

P.S. I would like to give inspirational credit to Michael J. Fox and his long ago television series “Spin City”.

Bob Bandy – January 2024

2023 Climate Rules For Thee But Not For Me

December 31, 2023 By: bob Category: Culture, In the News, On Bob's Mind, Something To Think About

photo – Google.com

Ending 2023 I look back on another year of lies and fraud from the “Man Made Climate Change Hucksters”.  I take some small measure of comfort that more and more thinking people are waking up to this big lie and realizing these Scam Artists are really only trying to get control of every aspect of your life by controlling how you live, what you drive, how you cook your food, dry your clothes and heat/cool where your live.  All of this as they fly around in their private jets to “Climate Conferences” around the world.  The controls they want to impose on your life are for you, not for them. 

“RULES FOR THEE BUT NOT FOR ME”

photo: Slick Times

Mentally Challenged Climate Czar John Kerry Jets around the world in his private jet to conferences bragging about how he has the United States on a path to eliminate all Coal and Natural Gas fired Electric Generating Plants in the United States while the world’s two most populace nations, China and India, are building new ones as fast as they can.  He is also handing out U.S. Taxpayer Cash to other nations as “Reparations” for the pollution generated by America.  China is smiling all the way to the bank as they sell Wind Turbines, Solar Panels and EV Batteries to the United States for Tens/Hundreds of Billions of Dollars adding to the United States Federal Deficit.

I have written on this subject a number of times and will close out 2023 with a reprint of one of my articles that gives you a history of these “Climate Predictions” over the years, none of which have ever been accurate, but, these “Prognosticators of Doom” continue to use their phony prophetic nonsense to fatten their own bank accounts and buy beach front homes in places they tell us are going to be flooded by rising oceans from “Global Warming”. 

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JUNK SCIENCE ALA CARTE

(true when I wrote this four years ago and true today)

THIS IS GOING TO MAKE SOME READERS ANGRY , BUT….. I HOPE IT WILL ALSO MAKE THEM THINK ABOUT WHAT IS WRITTEN HERE AND REFLECT ON PRIOR “EXPERT CLIMATE PREDICTIONS”.

I am more than a skeptic of self proclaimed “Scientific Experts and Prophets of the Apocalyptic Doomsday of Civilization and Life as we know it”.

I believe that there are both Politicians and Bureaucrats with an “agenda” that have decided the best course to pursue for turning us all into obedient, glassy eyed drones is to get control of every aspect of our daily lives. What we eat, where we live, what we are allowed to hear, what we can drive etc.. Their goal is seizing absolute dictatorial control of all, and especially, “fossil fuel” energy resources and access to them.

I can visualize them carrying bags of taxpayer cash to “New Age, Progressive, Socialist Colleges and Universities”. They seek out like minded science students and professors willing to prostitute there “research” with the goal of “proving” their predetermined “Theorems” regarding “Man Made Global Climate Change”.

This is how the game is played. If your “Research” demonstrates what “we” Bureaucrats and “Progressive” Politicians want it to show, the sacks of taxpayer cash will continue to flow – if it does not then the sacks of cash will discontinue flowing.

Pretty cynical, aren’t I? I have gotten this way observing and remembering the last 50+ years of “Predictions” from “Experts”.

Does climate change? Of course. If we had been alive 10,000 years ago, the majority of us would have been up to our butts in year round glaciers, ice and snow. Today, large areas of the upper United States are flat lands created by glacial action. Thankfully, climate has changed and continues to change with warmer and cooler periods.

Remember that 70% of our planet is covered by water and of the remaining 30% mankind only really occupies a tiny percentage of the land area.

Lets look at the record of some of the “Prophets of Doom”.

The Population Bomb – a best selling book written by Stanford University Professor Paul Ehrlich (and his wife Anne, who was not credited) in 1968 predicted worldwide famine in the 1970’s and 1980’s due to overpopulation, as well as other Societal upheavals unless immediate steps were taken to limit population growth. At the time there were some 3.8 Billion people on earth and today the number is more like 7.6 Billion. Statistically, hunger is no greater problem now than it was then. Paul Ehrlich was wrong but created near panic in sections of the population due to his predictions.

In the 1970’s “Scientists” predicted an imminent Global Cooling trend leading to a new “Ice Age”. One view of this prophecy can be seen in the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” (2004). This prediction was given great credibility by Newsweek, Time, Life, The National Geographic and the news media. Instead, what actually happened was a slight warming trend. The so-called “Scientists” and “Experts” were wrong again.

Perhaps one of the biggest “hucksters” of all is former Vice President Al Gore who has made a fortune with his book, “An Inconvenient Truth” – 2006, and his following exploitation and “marketing” of his conjecture, all of which was supposed to happen long before now. Let’s look at some of his “predictions” and “science” while on his way to the bank:

1. Rising Sea Levels – inaccurate and misleading. Both Al Gore and former President Barack Obama have since bought Beachfront Mansions.

2. New Ice Age in Europe – they’ve been spared; it never happened.

3. South Sahara Drying Up – completely untrue.

4. Massive Flooding in China and India – again, didn’t happen.

5. Polar Bear Extinction – The Polar Bear population is increasing.

6. The Earth would be in a “True Planetary Emergency Within a Decade Unless Drastic Action was Taken to Reduce Greenhouse Gasses” – never happened.

Al Gore made many other predictions. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Still he has created a huge following of “true believers” and a near panic in some quarters.

Now we have the newest prediction as shared with us by Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes and others that Civilization is Doomed within 12 years unless we immediately adopt their “Green New Deal” which will supposedly cost between 50 and 100 Trillion Dollars over the next ten years.

They have succeeded in causing panic among a large portion of the population with their “Progressive” agenda and even caused many prospective mothers to declare they will no longer have children because they to not want to bring babies into a world that is doomed to extinction in a short period of time. This is junk science and prophecy gone mad. Such fear mongering is beneath contempt. Shame on them.

Patrick Moore – Former President of Greenpeace has stated it well: “There is no definitive scientific proof through real-world observation that carbon dioxide is responsible for any of the slight warming of global climate which has occurred during the past 300 years.” He rejects the “science is settled” and “the debate is over” statements so popular in worldwide media.

I firmly expect to get a good deal of angry responses to this but before you fire off that angry reply or cancel your subscription, can you tell me the last doomsday climate prediction by the “experts” that came true? I will stand by what I have written.

(Bob Bandy – November 2019)

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Wishing you a Happier New Year in 2024!

Bob Bandy – December 31, 2023

 

ANOTHER 6 BILLION DOLLAR RATHOLE

December 11, 2023 By: bob Category: Humor, In the News, On Bob's Mind, Something To Think About

Biden administration sends $6 billion to California for high-speed rail projects

Biden administration sends $6 billion

to California for high-speed rail projects

KCRA NEWS – DECEMBER 8 2023

 

More than $6 billion is going to high-speed electric rail projects in California President Joe Biden made the announcement today in Las Vegas.

The money is slated for two different projects, one connecting Las Vegas and Los Angeles and another linking Bakersfield with Merced.  Supporters hope the billions of dollars will get the high-speed rail system back on track.

“This massive federal investment takes us one step closer to high-speed rail as a reality,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, (D) San Francisco.  More than $3 billion is set to help build nearly 175 miles of track between Bakersfield and Merced.

In 2008, Californians gave the green light to the 500-mile project, which promised to carry passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours on a fully electric train traveling at speeds of up to 220 miles per hour.

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RIPE FRUIT FOR A CONSPIRACY THEORY

Given the fact that Washington D.C. and Sacramento are filled with fiscal financial morons, even they have to know that $6 Billion Dollars would not be enough funding to pay for a “Right of Way” access route for a high speed rail system between downtown Los Angeles and Las Vegas even with “Imminent Domain” theft of land.  California has already spent $9.8 Billion Dollars on a much reduced in size High Speed Rail System between Merced and Bakersfield  (Governor Jerry Brown’s original plan was for the High Speed Rail System to travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles).  Some 8 years  and 9.8 Billion Dollars later this Fiscal Black Hole has never carried a single passenger a single mile and almost assuredly never will.  These Big Budget “Pie In The Sky” projects are most often nothing more that a thinly veiled payoff to Political Supporters and Politically Loyal Labor Unions. 

For the conspiracy plan, maybe just maybe, this is Joe Biden’s way of throwing a $6 Billion dollar “bone” to his buddy and protege Gavin Newsom who is facing a 2023-2024 State Fiscal Budget Deficit of $68 Billion Dollars.  Once the state gets the $6 Billion who is to say they can’t just “delay” the rail project and use the $6 Billion Dollars to help finance a loan to balance the budget.  California already does this with gas tax dollars that are supposedly committed to roads.  That will be, of course, after some number of Millions of Dollars end up in selected pockets for “Feasibility and Engineering Studies” as well as “Executive Conferences” in specially selected “getaway retreats in private surroundings”.

Also it might help Governor Newsom in his “shadow” run for the Presidency just in case President Biden takes a further downturn and finds himself in a room with Winnie the Pooh wallpaper and a full time nurse helping him with his “jammies”, slippers, and warm cocoa “medicine”.  In such a situation  the Democratic Party would need a ready “stand-in” and Gavin is waiting in the wings.

As for High Speed Rail, California can continue with their current alternate system between Merced and Bakersfield.

 

Nine Billion Dollars Later

For my earlier writings on this subject you might want to visit:   

https://www.stoppullingthewagon.com/?s=high+speed+rail+2.0

Or, you can just type High Speed Rail 2.0 in the search box on this page.

I have found that sometimes it is better to laugh at the Clowns than get frustrated with their antics.

Bob Bandy – December 2023

 

TODAY’S COLLEGE CROWD – I DON’T GET IT

November 28, 2023 By: bob Category: Culture, Humor, In the News, On Bob's Mind, Something To Think About

Image result for pro hamas rally's on colege campus's

University of Arizona Pro-Hamas Students Claim they were Too Unsafe to Protest

I have to admit that I am completely “Befuddled” by todays college students who pay thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars a year to attend Universities to indoctrinate them with theories  and political ideologies which are in obvious and apparent opposition to everything we are told they believe.  Namely, the majority of College Students would appear to completely believe in a WOKE culture dedicated to the LGBTQ+ life along with Transgender and Multi-Gender at will “realities” along with Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.  Add to that the demand for Abortion on demand up through the ninth  month of pregnancy, and in a couple of states, the peri-natal period following live birth. 

I DON’T GET IT

These “Progressives” who believe you can be a “Guy” on Tuesday, a “Girl” on Wednesday and a non-Binary Leprechaun on Thursday and whose cultural values reject Christianity in large measure because they believe Christian teachings and moral code is too strict for their chosen lifestyle, seem to have chosen to set sail on the “Good Ship Hamas”.

Hamas, who on their best days are the illegitimate sons of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its absolute ruler, the Ayatollah Khomeini, a man who rules with the dictates of Islam as pronounced in the 7th Century.  That is a world in which women have no rights other than to be the “Chattel” property of men.  A system where women by custom can be “circumcised” to be sure they never take pleasure in their relationship with the men in their lives.  Daughters can be executed without penalty by their fathers if the father feels they have dishonored the family.  It is a “Man’s World” in an absolute way.  

In Iran, and some/most other Islamic based communities, the LGBTQ+ lifestyle is forbidden by law.  It was once joked that the life expectancy of an openly gay male in Iran was about 38 minutes.  

Hamas males consider women little more than breeders for the next generation of Terrorists.  They also look on women and children as handy shields in a firefight and consider them little more than propaganda “cannon fodder” in their war against Israel.

So why do America’s “Progressive” Students want to hitch a ride on the Ship of Hamas?  Because they have been fed a load of crap by their overpaid far left political professors who have told them the lie that the Palestinians are the victim of Israeli Colonialism.  Palestine was first given the name by the Romans when they conquered territory which was occupied at that time by the Jewish people and Hebrew claim on the land goes back to Father Abraham.

Israel is, and has been willing to live in peace with their Palestinian neighbor in a “Two State” solution in peace and prosperity for both sides.  Hamas totally rejects this and demands the total destruction of the State of Israel.   This is a fact, not propaganda.

So why the outcry from our mis-educated and over-indebted College Youth and other “Hate America Activists”?  Follow the money.  People like George Soros who will pay any price to destroy an America he hates and funds these activists while they are being fed lies.

If protestors really want to Free Palestine, they should be be asking that it be freed from the Barbaric Rule of Hamas.  Both the Palestinians and Israel are victims of the Terrorism of Hamas who treats the citizens of Gaza as serfs or slaves.

Like I said, I don’t get it.  How can an “educated” population group who say they are socially so “Progressive” align themselves, and partner with, a people who are historically and socially so “Regressive” and opposed to the values the so-called “Progressives” say they champion and espouse.  In my mind it makes them either hypocrites or just plain dumb.

Bob Bandy – November 2023

 

BLOOMBERG “FINISH THE JOB ON COAL”

November 09, 2023 By: bob Category: Culture, In the News, On Bob's Mind, Something To Think About

Behind a $500 Million Donation to ‘Finish the Job on Coal’

Behind a $500 Million Donation to

‘Finish the Job on Coal’

Kevin Stocklin – Epoch Times – November 5, 2023

The following are excerpts from the above article which I am reprinting with only a few comments following the excerpts as the above writer pretty much “says it all” regarding the consequences of following the direction of the “Manmade Global Warming Junkies” (my phrase).

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Billionaire philanthropist and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged $500 million in September toward shifting electricity production in the United States to wind and solar energy and shutting down its coal- and gas-fired plants.

However, some experts say that Bloomberg’s millions, together with the billions being spent by the Biden administration, are paving a road to ruin.

The donation from Bloomberg Philanthropies, which adds to the $500 million Mr. Bloomberg pledged in 2019, aims to “finish the job on coal” and “accelerate the clean energy transition to reach the goal of 80 percent of total electricity generation” from renewables, according to an official statement.

“With 372 of 530 coal plants announced to retire or closed to date—more than 70 percent of the country’s coal fleet—this next phase will shut down every last U.S. coal plant,” Bloomberg Philanthropies stated.

The effort also aims to “slash gas plant capacity in half, and block all new gas plants.”Many of those who study America’s electric infrastructure say this is taking us down a dangerous path.

German energy economist Lars Schernikau has assessed the results of his country’s “Energiewende” (energy transition) and warns Americans to not follow Germany’s example.

“Wind and solar do not seem to work; otherwise, after 20 years of ‘Energiewende,’ power prices would be lower and Germany would not be in trouble,” he told The Epoch Times.

Germany spent hundreds of billions of euros to build wind and solar facilities since 2002, doubling its power generation capacity and boosting the share of renewables to 60 percent from about 10 percent. However, its electricity production has been flat, while the cost of electricity skyrocketed.

Wind and solar don’t increase output proportionately because of their significantly lower “capacity factor,” or the percentage that’s actually generated versus capacity built.

 The capacity factor for wind and solar is significantly lower than that for nuclear or fossil fuels. (Energy Information Administration)

For all the billions spent, Germany’s “Energiewende” has delivered an increasingly unreliable electric system at a cost to consumers that’s higher than virtually every other developed country. The process of shuttering coal and nuclear plants has left the country at the whim of the weather and unfriendly neighbors, such as Russia, and also dangerously short of dependable power that can be adjusted to meet fluctuations in demand.

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The entire article is available on Epoch Times at the date shown above.  My only closing comment is that our own governments drive to pursue solar and wind power for all of our nations energy needs is in the opinion of many knowledgeable and thoughtful experts a “fools errand” that will lead us down a path of ever more expensive and unreliable energy for our day to day needs under all weather conditions.  To quote another excerpt from the article:

“We’re following people here that are pied pipers,” physicist and energy analyst John Droz told The Epoch Times, referring to the literary character who led children to their doom through delusive enticement.”  “This whole business of promoting renewables as a solution is completely unproven, scientifically.”

Too close I can only say this whole “Climate Change” madness is largely based on junk science which I have written about in the past.  Go to:

https://www.stoppullingthewagon.com/?s=junk+science+ala+carte

Bob Bandy – November 2023