‘Tis the season to reinvigorate American energy.
via CFACT
December 20, 2024 at 03:56AM
By Paul Homewood
As many of you aware, there have been strange goings on in the website recently!
Now that things are hopefully settling down again, I can briefly explain what happened.
A couple of weeks ago, I receive a Take Down Notice from WordPress. This means that someone has claimed copyright to some of my posts, and asked WordPress to disable public access, ie delete the post. By law, they must comply. It is a common event – you often see videos disabled on YouTube.
The request this time came from the Wall Street Journal, via an outfit called NA Media Access in Kent, who specialise in this sort of thing. About ten posts were involved, none of which were recent and one of which went as far back as 2016!
I have only had one Take Down Notice before – from the Telegraph concerning a Jillian Ambrose article which I showed to be full of nonsense. Clearly Jilly did not like being criticised!
But WordPress always add a reminder that repeated incidents of copyright infringement could lead to permanent suspension.
I did not think any more about it, until I received a second Notice last week, this time concerning half a dozen Telegraph articles. I have always assumed that republishing parts of newspaper articles for discussion are covered by Fair Use, and always of course quote the links to the original report. Many websites do the same.
But a second Notice in a week set the alarm bells ringing! Two Notices in a week could not be coincidence, so how many more might arrive.
I soon realised that it would take forever checking every post, so I decided to bulk delete all posts, month by month, which I did the next day.
Deleted posts stay in Trash for thirty days, and I am now in the process of working back month by month, and republishing posts which contain nothing that could be possibly seen as infringement. Most of my posts are what I would call “transient” – that is they cover news items at the time, but have little usefulness later on. These I will not repost.
So far, I have managed to work my way back to April 2024, and hope to cover all months back to at least the start of 2023. Most older stuff is generally superseded eventually anyway, so what is left will be the important stuff. I’ll also try to pick some of the older posts which have continued relevance – Little Ice Age stuff, hurricanes etc.
It is worth pointing out that I have all of my spreadsheets and sources of data, so can easily recreate.
Finally a lot of old stuff can still be downloaded on Wayback, on the link below, which allows you to search via the Tag cloud.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/
Hopefully I will get no more hassle from NA Media Access!
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
December 20, 2024 at 02:53AM
Many climate scientists in the USA are worried about whether they will still have a job when President Trump moves into the White House on the 20th January. It will be interesting to see just how much he will change the situation in his second term. What he needs to do is to allow an open debate with time for the sceptics to put their case to the country.
via climate science
December 20, 2024 at 01:45AM
Ed. Note: The author is a solar technologist and founder/CEO of SunDanzer, a free-market, off-grid solar company based in Tuscon, Arizona. Jigar Shah is director of the $400 billion Loan Programs Office in the U.S. Department of Energy.
Dear Jigar:
We both have a passion for solar and renewable energy to succeed in the marketplace, and we both have prodigy that will inherit the environment after we are gone. Leaving them a better place—ecologically, fiscally, and otherwise—is our North Star.
Massive annual budget deficits and record accumulated national debt are getting worse by the day. The annual deficit is now $1.8 trillion (FY 2024), despite a 11 percent increase in tax receipts. FY 2025 is shaping up to be worse. The accumulated debt of $36 trillion comes out to $107,000 per U.S. citizen and $272,000 per taxpayer. And by the time you read this, the debt will be tens of millions of dollars more (see US Debt Clock here).
The federal government’s futile, wasteful crusade against carbon dioxide (CO2) is part of the deficit/debt problem. Rushing out taxpayer commitments to struggling companies spites the American people who voted for fiscal prudence in the recent election. Such desperation also compromises due diligence. “These actions raise significant concerns regarding the timing, integrity, and potential risk to taxpayers,” warned GreenMet in “Rushing the Clock.”
The expedited nature of these approvals appears politically motivated and carries implications that may have long-term ramifications. Although these loans may align with the administration’s energy policy objectives, the manner in which they are granted could undermine their intended purpose, ultimately exposing taxpayers to financial liabilities resulting from questionable decisions.
A recent special report by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) has questioned your program, stating:
There is tremendous risk to the taxpayer from the recent historic expansions of Department of Energy programs. [Different laws have] … provided the Department with an unprecedented $99 billion in new appropriations, $30.5 billion in new authorizations, and an enhanced loan authority of over $400 billion…. This almost half a trillion in authority is more than 23 times that of the LPO portfolio balance as of November 2021, when the IIJA was signed.
The companies being rescued are not healthy or they would not need government loans. Coming reform by the new Administration promises to remove or terminate the subsidies that these companies depend on to service their debt. This spells trouble and a legacy you want to leave for yourself or the next generation.
So please, I urge you to instruct the Loan Programs Office to stop making these loans. Resign, if necessary, and state in your resignation letter your concerns about federal spending and the peril of throwing good money after bad. Defer to Chris Wright, the presumtive new head of the Department of Energy, to wind down the agency toward privatization, transfer, and termination.
Free-market energy is the best path for consumers, taxpayers, and the economy. It is time for a new beginning now, not next month. Stop these loans!
– David Bergeron: CEO SunDanzer
The post Jigar Shah: End DOE’s Loans/Grants Now! appeared first on Master Resource.
via Master Resource
December 20, 2024 at 01:10AM
