Just another $20 billion dollars for the Climate Swamp
The New EPA chief has just tracked down another $2 billion handed out to a 2-bit nothing climate entity at the last minute. It’s only a tiny part of the Monster Swamp but it captures the spirit of bald-faced looting that was The US bloated Government.
The US voters voted to cut government spending on November 5th, so the obvious thing for Democrats to do was — the exact opposite. In the last days of the Biden pillage-n-steal campaign about $20 billion dollars was “allocated” to the EPA and parked in a bank account. Presumably in the hope of keeping the NGO activists of “climate” alive through the dark days of Trumpian hell. It may also have been a way to pay off friends, or stash funds for nice post-Trump career opportunities. Who knows? But it was all a bit of a panic and the aid was jetting out through a fire hose. So much so, that, one community group with only a $100 in revenue, was given two whole billion dollars.
The funds were set aside at an outside financial institution — Citibank — before Biden left office and part of a larger, $20 billion pot of money the former president’s EPA received through the Inflation Reduction Act to dole out to climate groups.
“It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told the outlet, referring to Power Forward Communities’ latest tax filings. “That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”
The $2 billion was part of a $20 billion dollar spray that was supposed to go towards eight different NGO’s with instantly forgettable names like Power Forward Communities, and the Climate United Fund. In the world of teenage protestors, and B-grade scientists it’s a massive amount of money. Think how many hack modelers someone could employ to churn out meaningless papers with headlines like “Climate change is making crocodiles hotter”?
In theory, some of the money was supposedly going to “decarbonize” low income houses, which is nearly as useless. In the end, a few poor people get to pay tax to employ a bureaucrat who spends their own money buying them a solar panel they wouldn’t have bought, which achieves nothing they didn’t have cheaper twenty years ago, but flows right on through to improve the solar stock options of some friends of the bureaucrats. It’s just a form of servitude. The poor get green electrons they didn’t want, and the only lives that are enriched are in the bureaucracy and insiders at the stock exchange.
To truly appreciate the soul sucking nature of the looting it’s worth revisiting the words of the young EPA staffer two months ago, who casually bragged about the wild spending of “$50 billion dollars” in the last days of the Biden era bonfire:
” It truly feels like we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing, like, gold bars off the edge”
Project Veritasgot undercover footage of Brent Efron (seen in the video below), who gloated that the money was being stuffed into NGO’s as “an insurance policy against Trump”. He said giving it to NGO’s was so much better than spending it on government programs, because that way, it’s harder for the Trump administration to get it back. (We can see how much they care about the voters.)
He went on to say that he might work for one of these places “it would be really cool”. So the EPA worker and his colleagues were potentially stashing the money for their future careers. There’s a word for that…
Fortunately, the new head of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, has the receipts, and wants the money back:
“The financial agent agreement with the bank needs to be instantly terminated, and the bank must immediately return all of the gold bars that the Biden administration tossed off the Titanic,” he argued…
The saying “like Gold Bars off the Titanic” will become legend, so if you missed this video in early December, watch it now. It really is something…
Comments under the video
@DrekJS27: When can we start sending people to jail for this?
@mec4142: Oh so there’s money but not for Hawaii, or Florida or North Carolina or Tennessee or the long forgotten Ohio. This is sickening.
The Royal Society is thinking of chucking Elon Musk out of their exclusive club. The man who caught a falling rocket, who bought electric cars to the world, who is testing chips that may heal paralysis, and runs the first private company to put astronauts in space, is not good enough for the precious collective. One day, he may well get us to Mars. Which science club would look pretty silly then?
After all, it’s not like he faked data, wasted billions in grants, sold taxpayers a hundred dodgy weather-changing-schemes, or killed people with an experimental drug is it? (Though, if he had, they’d probably give him a medal.)
It’s all about The Money
The Royal Society was founded in 1660 and hasn’t chucked anyone out for 150 years, so you’d think his crime must be a serious failing in science. Supposedly, the mob say, he breached their code of conduct, was mean to other members and spread “conspiracy theories” and “misinformation”. But the real truth, as even Nature explains in their subheader, is that he committed the unforgivable sin of cutting off the grant money.
We know this because even though 74 members protested last August with a truckload of complaints, the mass pile-on only happened in the last few weeks when President Trump and the DOGE team were shutting down wasteful programs. Suddenly 3,000 members scientists of some sort are upset enough to sign an open letter. Auditing taxpayer funds is a bridge too far for the dependent minions of Big Government. Too much waste is never enough.
The Royal Society members can pretend that this is not about the money, but after Dorothy Bishop laid out her list of issues, they hired a lawyer to investigate, and they said that Elon had not broken the Code of Conduct. So what’s left is that this really is about “the money”.
The Open Letter to the Royal Society from Emeritus Professor Stephen Curry lists the money and somehow calls it a free speech issue:
The situation is rendered more serious because Mr Musk now occupies a position within a Trump administration in the USA that has over the past several weeks engaged in an assault on scientific research in the US that has fallen foul of federal courts. It has sought to impose huge cuts in funding and a regime of censorship (particularly with regard to EDI and climate issues) that is a direct threat to freedom of expression and academic freedom.
If the Royal Society gave a toss about free speech they would have objected to the vilification of scientists who disagree with government mandated “consensuses”. They would have protested the sacking of anyone with a diverse view. Instead they’re not only silent about cancel-culture in science, they endorse it. They rewarded and lauded the namecalling psychologist who calls skeptical scientists “climate deniers” — a political, demeaning label, designed to bully and silence them. Consider Stephen Lewandowsky (fellow of the Royal Society) who hid his data, included a person who was 32,000 years old in a survey, and miraculously claimed to show “skeptics” of government consensuses are nutters by asking other people (who are hostile to skeptics) to fill out a survey. It was that bad. (And yes, he has signed the letter objecting to Elon Musk). The Royal Society is fine with bullying, and bad science — as long as it doesn’t threaten the funding.
Elon Musk — “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci“
As for Curry’s other objections to Elon Musk, the Society was tarnished, he said, by its lack of commitment to “diversity and inclusion” because Elon joked about Anthony Fauci on X and the Society hadn’t reprimanded him. The real question here is why the Royal Society should care much about diversity and inclusion. Shouldn’t they care about merit and scientific standards instead?
Dorothy Bishop says Elon breached the Code of Conduct. The rules, she says, are that:
Fellows and Foreign Members shall treat all individuals in the scientific enterprise collegially and with courtesy, and …shall not engage in any form of discrimination, harassment, or bullying.
Most of those I’ve spoken to agree that a serious breach of these principles was in 2022, when Musk tweeted: “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci“, thereby managing to simultaneously offend the LGBTQ community, express an antivaxx sentiment, and put Fauci, already under attack from antivaxxers, at further risk.Fauci was not a Fellow at the time these comments were made, but that should not matter given the scope of the statement is “individuals in the scientific community“. This incident was covered by CBS News.
Since then Fauci has been pardoned by President Joe Biden for everything back to 2014, which Fauci accepted, showing that Elon was not just funny, but right: “Prosecute Fauci” indeed.
Thou shalt not question injections — is that science?
Dorothy Bishop was concerned about “Musk’s use of X to spread misinformation, promote vaccine hesitancy and attack public sciences “. No one at the Royal Society apparently, or at Nature (which repeated her accusation), had the wit to point out that it was a strange scientific paradigm to say that one type of medical therapy was beyond question. The motto of the Royal Society is Nullius in Verba, which means “take no one’s word for it”– except apparently when it’s a new barely-tested mRNA therapy, of course, and then we’re supposed to take everyone’s word for it, all the time, and inject our pregnant women and babies too. It’s like vaccines are a holy sacrament — or perhaps a huge source of revenue for Royal Society members?
Shh. We wouldn’t want to put open discussion about public health above profits, patents and grants, would we?
The Royal Society acts every day more and more like a trade union for approved priests of science.
They reveal their small mindedness in so many ways. They accuse Musk of “attacking public sciences” which begs the question of what a public science is? Is that different to real science? Or has the Royal Society totally forgotten that science is a process and not a government institution?
The original full name of the Society was The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge and no one on Earth is doing more to improve natural knowledge than Elon Musk is. And the reason he can do so much, so fast, is surely because he is funding it all himself, not waiting for government approval, appeasing bureaucrats, or cringing before “science” committees with magical fashionable keywords like diversity.
Musk should quit the Royal Society because it has forgotten what science is
The Royal Society don’t know it, but they desperately need Elon Musk. The Royal Society has become nothing more than a workers union for government funded technicians dressed in lab coats, and he’s the greatest private scientist in the world today. He is the antidote to government funded paralysis in science (and in so many ways). Consensus “scientists” are just a paid marketing wing of Big Government — captured by the monopolistic funding.
The Royal Society need Elon much more than Elon needs the Royal Society. He should quit now, before they hold their sanctimonious meeting.
*UPDATE: Quitting? Nah. It only makes the Thought Police happy. Unless he has the time to excoriate them properly on the way out, it’s so much better to let them dig their own hole in public, then come crawling back when he gets to Mars. Besides, Elon has 218 million followers on X – If he wanted to set up a Society of Scientists — ones who care about the scientific method, he could do it tomorrow.
“DOGE can’t be stopped because it’s a very technical team.”
Trump and Elon Musk make a killer combination — One has business and politics, the other has wildly hi-tech science (and business skills too). For decades the Blob controlled science, captured it and strangled it to make it dependent. But they crippled their own teams so badly that one man came to achieve more than NASA. So it’s fitting that the same man came back to outflank the Blob’s technical defenses and leave them bare…
Joe Lonsdale, a tech venture capitalist who made his millions selling software to the Defence department, explains why Elon Musk and his tech expertise change everything this time. According to him, when Reagan tried to get answers from the bureaucracy, he’s didn’t have the technical help. They would ask questions but “there are so many ways of obscuring and to block these things. ” As Lonsdale describes it, “– no president has done this, ever. No President has ever had tech people around him.”
They went to the systems… and they started finding things, like “oh my goodness” and these people who work for the agencies tried to confront them, “you can’t look at the systems” “you’re getting around all our ability to block this stuff… “We thought you’d never actually get to see this stuff”. They’re freaking out.
So it’s very transparent … they actually saw the payments, …the payments were going out to crazy s***. There were payments to people with the same social security numbers, payments to people with no social security numbers … to internews network which is training media all around the world how to have a certain point of view — it’s a very left point of view. There are payments to protestors…
The White House now has tech support.
The matrix is being reprogrammed to make success one of the possible outcome. They did not expect this.
Elon Musk tweets the ages of social security recipients in the USA. The simplest of tests. The most banal of cross checks, and yet there are about four million people who are 150 years old, and 2 people still collecting checks who predate the constitution.
And the attacks for finding massive waste keep coming: US Senator John Fetterman attacked Musk for Rummaging through our personal s***, and Elon replied,“Bruh, if I wanted to rummage through random personal shit, I could have done that at PAYPAL. Hello???“
And where is the media? Apart from a few outlets most are reporting the legal feuds that are trying to block Trump and Musk.
The biggest exposé of government fraud, waste and corruption in history is unfolding…
According to Doge.tracker Elon Musk has already saved the US taxpayer $45 billion dollars (or $300 per taxpayer). Tonight DOGE officials have entered the IRS building in DC to begin their investigation. Coming soon: The Pentagon which employs 3 million troops and has a budget of $800 billion.
President Donald Trump praised Elon Musk and his army of ‘super-geniuses’ at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as they investigate the federal government for waste and fraud. … Trump said that Musk’s group had gone from 20 people to as many as 100.
Musk has been attracting young coders to work in Washington for months. The DOGE team were looking for 100 full time dedicated people to work in Washington.
The “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” that DOGE seeks need to be willing to work “80+ hours per week,” DOGE itself posted on its official X account. “This will be tedious work, make lots of enemies & compensation is zero,” Musk personally added. — Forbes
But they were attracting top guns who saw it as a career defining move, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Such is the allure of Musk:
One DOGE applicant pointed to a comment made by Figma CEO Dylan Field on X on Monday as “very good, pro-DOGE propaganda”: “I’d wager that in 10-20 years the group that works on DOGE will be the next PayPal Mafia,” Field posted” – Forbes
One of Musk’s team is Luke Farritor — who deciphered a 2,000-year-old charred papyrus scroll from ancient Greece with AI. He was already working for Elon Musk at SpaceX. Musk has a way of finding the hyper intelligent engineers. I heard a story that one MIT professor looked up his top 10 graduates and found half of them were working for Musk. When Elon Musk heard that, he turned up at the professors door to ask where the other half were.
Great modern art on this moment in history
FreeVoiceMedia uses AI to create a smashing parody movie trailer. Elon Musk is Sherlock Holmes solving the largest financial crime in the history of the world…
The Real Great Reset
Elon Musk was on X today wearing his “Tech Support” shirt offering advice to the world: Have you tried turning the government off and on again?
But seriously, Musk explains in one minute how to get on top of the mountain of debt.
And so we find ourselves in this strange moment, where the Trump team Shock and Awe program is in full swing, the Blob has just started to fight back with legal suits, and a new era appears to be dawning:
“I don’t think the Democrats realize that it’s over”
I don’t think the Democrats realize that it’s over, and that there was a vast infrastructure that made their feeble arguments viable and that infrastructure is now collapsing…
Watching the confirmation hearings, my sense was that the Elizabeth Warren’s and Bernie Sanders’ were dinosaurs who do not understand the Earth has just been hit from outer space and that they don’t live in the world that they are so used to. Their corruption was immediately apparent and they are not used to that, they’re used to having a whole phony journalistic layer that covers for them. That layer is gone, and the American public is awake and it’s angry and rightfully so…”
Next Target: people who seemed to have made inexplicable amounts of money. Perhaps they are great investors, says Musk, but we are curious:
Nancy Pelosi Annual salary: $223,000 Net worth: $202 million
Mitch McConnell Annual salary: $200,000 Net worth: $95 million
Chuck Schumer Annual salary: $210,000 Net worth: $75 million
Elizabeth Warren Annual salary: $285,000 Net worth: $67 million
At this moment in history, as AI takes off, France has a couple of gigawatts of reliable baseload power to spare. It has a vision of being one of the global Big Three industrial hubs of AI development along with China and the USA. The French Energy giant EDF is offering land near the power plants to build big new AI datacenters, and is already signing those deals.
With AI on the cusp of self-directed robots to transform manufacturing, transportation, medicine, research, and farming, it could be remaking whole economies soon.
Ten or twenty years ago, Australia could have joined this party. We could have expanded our economy vastly, putting us at the front of the new technology. Instead we wrecked the grid, blew up the coal plants, and ran out of gas. All so we “wouldn’t be left behind” or called mean names by someone at the UN.
UK-based AI cloud provider Fluidstack has signed a memorandum of understanding with the French government to construct one of the world’s largest decarbonised AI supercomputers in France. Meanwhile, utility EDF has identified four sites on its own land that it will offer for data centres. AI firms with its nuclear electricity.
It added: “Fluidstack and the French government recognise that AI’s future hinges on three core pillars: energy, compute power, and AI models. By leveraging France’s nuclear assets, the advanced grid infrastructure enabled by [grid operator] RTE, leading AI talent, and cutting-edge compute technologies, this partnership will establish France amongst the world’s top three AI hubs alongside the United States and China.”
Nobody tempts anyone with solar panels, voltage surges, price rises and unreliable power.
If it was the end of a Big Green Bubble, it would look a lot like this…
Australia is still launching itself to Net Zero Land at the top of the Magic Faraway Tree. There was no election in Australia, and no change to the green policies. Yet, a month after the US banks quietly peeled themselves away from the Globalist Banker Blob, the first Australian bank starts backing away slowly too. They don’t explain why in any convincing fashion. Have they just lost the faith that renewables are going to work, or is this just the end of the subsidy train with the collapse of the USAID grift and graft?
Kyle Robertson, Senior banking analyst, Australian Financial Review
This decision by Macquarie makes little sense, prioritising political expediency and short-term financial interests over the longer-term viability of its business and the economy.
Macquarie Bank has sent shockwaves around the world by quietly announcing it has quit the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) this week, taking the dubious honour of being the first major Australian financial institution to pull out of a global climate initiative.
The senior banking analyst is baffled after Macquarie spent years pumping up renewables:
It is hard to understand this sudden backslide after Macquarie spent years building up its reputation as a green bank. Macquarie chief executive Shemara Wikramanayake has been a feature of global climate conferences for years, promoting the need for large-scale public and private sector investment into renewable energy and climate adaptation initiatives.
The CEO was even recognized as “Time’s 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders in Business for 2023” ferrgoodnesssake!
Yet look at the power of bully bankers…
Robertson speaks in approving tones about the Australian bankers that are hobbling law abiding companies from providing a service consenting adults want to pay for.
ANZ and Westpac are still using corporate finance and bonds to finance companies expanding oil and gas. In contrast, the country’s largest bank, Commonwealth Bank, has ended finance for oil and gas producers without a credible Paris-aligned transition plan. At its 2024 AGM, NAB chairman Philip Chronican indicated that by October this year, the bank would end finance for companies pursuing oil and gas field expansion.
Who voted for the bankers to set Australian energy policy anyway?
If fossil fuels are so awful Robertson (or the bankers) could always try persuading people not to use them. Until then Australians allow the bankers to hold banking licences and make squillions of dollars in profits. But in a free market, a new banker could turn up and offer loans to all the unfashionable fossil fuel companies that the precious banker club eschew. Instead, citizens pay for regulatory watchdogs and police that protect these smug banker bullies against newcomers and competition.
Shh — it’s just a moment of backsliding
The announcement was made in muted tones, probably printed in grey ink, and filled with soothing words about how boring and normal it was to adjust the settings. Since Macquarie is still a significant investor in renewables projects — it probably doesn’t want to crash renewable share prices, and the CEO and the board don’t want to actually rub salt into the wounds of Labor Party policies either. So unlike the fanfare when the bankers united, the dissolution of the same banker club will be dressed up to look as boring as possible.
Does anyone believe this rot? Net Zero is all sorted now so they can step back “like many others” have?
“The NZBA helped develop global frameworks and assisted member banks as they established their initial decarbonisation plans. With those building blocks now in place, like many peers Macquarie will no longer be a member of NZBA, as we focus on updating and delivering our plans and reporting in line with regulatory requirements,” Macquarie said in a statement. —The Australian
Only the occasional “shock” from a die hard believer bank analyst gives away what a radical change in direction this is.
Macquarie said it would provide a further update on its net zero ambitions in May (probably right after the election).
PS: Yet again we see how The US Government de facto sets the policies of so many other nations all around the world.
UPDATE: Commenter Serge Wright #9 — Nuclear power in Australia will hurt renewables
Their move is all about monetary sustainability and it’s probably partly due to Dutton’s nuclear plan, which will have a big impact on the viability of RE [Renewable Energy] projects. If a nuclear plant goes into service it would be classed as clean energy and it would therefore be able to bid 24/7, forcing wind and solar to dump more excess energy at midday and also reducing the huge price spikes at peak periods that RE relies on to make profits. Just this policy being on the table is enough to scare away RE investment and it’s probably no coincidence that all of the offshore wind and green hydrogen projects have evaporated since the nuclear plan was put forward.
The decision by Macquarie is interesting because it’s happened before the election which is probably our most significant from a RE and CC perspective. A Dutton win would obviously be bad for RE, but a minority Labor win would be a disaster in the opposite direction with the Greens and Teals possibly legislating complete bans on all FF projects and energy sources. In the latter scenario there would be a huge short term influx of borrowed taxpayer money being pumped into the RE industry but followed by a collapse in the economy as the energy system and energy exports collapsed. I would expect the banks to pull out of the Net Zero alliance only after a Dutton win because there is some short term opportunity here in a minority Labor government. But perhaps Macquarie has realised that with Trump in office, Net Zero is dead anyway and a Dutton win would open up more FF export and gas projects as well as funding for the nuclear plants if they get legs.
The Trump win makes a conservative win (and nuclear power) more likely to happen in the next Australian election (due before the end of May).
Only one country on Earth has a reasonable target to keep planetary temperatures to 1.5C
Nearly all nations missed a UN deadline Monday to submit new targets for slashing carbon emissions, including major economies under pressure to show leadership following the US retreat on climate change.
Just 10 of nearly 200 countries required under the Paris Agreement to deliver fresh climate plans by February 10 did so on time, according to a UN database tracking the submissions.
Only one nation has a plan to keep temperatures to 1.5 degrees above whatever they were 150 years ago, when the weather was supposedly perfect. (That’s the UK — commiserations to the Brits).
Almost all the biggies missed — China, India and even the EU missed the deadline. The US was one of the only big nations that got in early, ….but then Trump axed the Paris deal.
Australia didn’t update its target because an election is coming, obviously, and they don’t want to scare the voters. The same is true for the EU, and they even admitted as much. Elections are such a nuisance:
The EU, historically a leader on climate policy, has been delayed by elections and internal processes and is bracing for fresh polls in Germany and Poland.
Remember, voters want climate action all over the world — they just don’t want to be told about it before they vote.
Just like that, Donald Trump gutted the UN Green Climate Fund. Among all the blockbuster scandals this last week, hardly anyone even registered that it happened. Politico, the government funded fake news organization, mentioned it on Feb 5th, and its barely made a ripple. There’s been no parade of extinctionists dressed as red witches, and no one has glued themselves to a freeway. The mainstream media have barely mentioned it. It’s almost like they don’t want to say it, in case other countries think — “great idea“.
Instead of outrage — “think of the children” — The State Department said “no comment” and so did the UN.
The Green Climate Fund is the world’s largest unguarded bucket of money labeled “climate change”. It was founded in 2010 and so far has squandered $16 billion on renewables and adaption projects in developing countries without spending 10 cents checking the evidence and assumptions.
The U.S. had committed the most money to the global fund, which helps over 100 countries grapple with the changing world.
“The government of the United States rescinds any outstanding pledges to the Green Climate Fund,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in a note dated Jan. 27, parts of which were seen by POLITICO.
The climate fund confirmed the decision.
The U.S. withdrawal follows President Donald Trump’s order revoking and rescinding the country’s federal climate finance program, signed on his first day in office.
Four billion may not sound like much in the scheme of things — especially when USAID is tossing around ten times as much, but it goes a long way among scientists, student activists and the rent-a-crowd protestors. It buys a lot of press releases, and it adds a large layer of dedicated cheerleaders for a “climate crisis” all around the world. In terms of performance art, it’s a lot of money.
The wild thing at the moment though, is all that money supposedly just vanished and hardly anyone is saying a thing.
There don’t seem to be many abandoned beneficiaries screaming for help, wondering if storms will be worse next year. It’s almost like we are not supposed to notice. The UNFCCC Green Climate Fund page on the UN site is so low key it barely exists. The latest report is 178 pages of blah. Does anyone, anywhere read it?
This was a fund that was originally supposed to be $100 billion dollars, yet somehow the logo looks like it was done by a high schooler. It’s like this money is hidden behind a wall of boring.
@DrekJS27: When can we start sending people to jail for this?
@mec4142: Oh so there’s money but not for Hawaii, or Florida or North Carolina or Tennessee or the long forgotten Ohio. This is sickening.
@warfumble: Sounds like treason