A few quotes about taxpayer money spent on useless climate studies from a fascinating site called Open The Books.
Quote The First — Bogus Warnings From The Future (emphasis mine in all cases)
Here is an eerie way to spend $5.7 million from the government: create fake voicemails from people as far in the future as 2065, when climate change has devastated the Earth and Alaska and California are without water.
In 2012, Columbia University’s Climate Center received the taxpayer-funded grant from the National Science Foundation to “engage adult learners and inform public understanding and response to climate change.”
This dystopian project, called Future Coast, also includes a game where people search for fictional fallen “chronofacts” that fall out of time.
These “immersive stories” are supposed to warn the public of the destruction that will befall the Earth if climate change continues on its course.
The university’s climate center’s Polar Learning and Responding Climate Change Education Partnership (PoLAR CCEP) received the funds to “to inform public understanding of and response to climate change,” according to the Future Coast website. How do fictional “chronofacts” and voicemails advertising tsunami insurance help inform people?
The only “real” aspect of all this was the $5.7 million cost, funded by the American taxpayer.
Great. You too can scare your kids with false warnings for only $5.7 million.
Quote The Second—What Passes For Infrastructure These Days
Here are just a few of the “earmarks” in the Democrats’ so-called “Infrastructure Bill”. Recall that “infrastructure” used to mean roads, bridges, freeways, and the like, projects that benefitted everyone. Here is what is called “infrastructure” today.
$4 billion earmarked for states, cities, villages, and county government projects. Recently, these localities already received $350 billion through the American Rescue Plan. Earmarks included
• $400,000 to the City of Harvey in Illinois to demolish 40 vacant homes.
$159 million on 119 earmarks for homeless services including $42 million to build housing for the California homeless in the San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles, Oakland, etc.• $52 million on 52 earmarks to combat the effects of climate change including $2 million to establish the “Virginia Climate Center” at George Mason University (Rep. Gerald Connolly D-VA) – to “increase resilience to the impacts of climate change.”
• $40 million for museums including a $3.75 million request by Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) to upgrade the Waukegan Carnegie Museum through the local park district. In fact, there were 29 earmarks with the word “museum” in the description and requests included a new $6.4 million Gandhi museum (Rep. Al Green D-TX); $2.2 million for the new Bahamian Museum of Art & Culture in Coconut Grove (Rep. Frederica Wilson D-FL); and $792,000 to repair the New England Motorcycle Museum (Rep. Joe Courtney D-CT).
People of goodwill can debate each of these goals, but is it truly the purpose of Congress to fund the projects on the local wish list?
Sigh … call me crazy, but on what planet is repairing the “New England Motorcycle Museum” part of “infrastructure”?
Quote The Third—White House Pluted Bloatocrats
Today, on July 1st, the Biden administration released the annual Report to Congress on White House Office Personnel. President Biden hired czars, expensive “fellows,” “assistants,” and spent on a much larger First Lady (FLOTUS) staff.
The payroll report included the name, status, salary and position title of all 567 White House employees costing taxpayers $49.6 million. (Search Biden’s White House payroll and Trump’s four years posted at OpenTheBooks.com.)
Since January, the Biden administration has quickly staffed up. Here are some key findings from our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com:
• There are 190 more employees on White House staff under Biden than under Trump (377) and 80 more than under Obama (487) at this point in their respective presidencies.
• $9.6 million increase in payroll spending vs. the Trump FY2017 payroll. In 2017, the Trump White House spent $40 million for 377 employees, while the Biden payroll amounts to $49.6 million for 567 employees. All spending amounts are inflation adjusted.
• Hires include 320 female staffers ($28.9 million salaries) vs. 240 male staffers ($20.8 million salaries). In terms of top staffers — Special Assistants — there are 52 female ($6.3 million salaries) vs. 10 males ($1.2 million).
• Currently, there are 12 staffers dedicated – at least in part – to Dr. Jill Biden vs. five staffers who served Melania Trump in her first year (FY2017).
• Counts of the “Assistants to the President” – the most trusted advisors to the president – are the same (22) in for the Biden administration and the Trump and Obama administrations. This year, these advisors make $180,000.
Special Initiative Czars
Starting in 2009, President Obama came under fire for hiring special initiative czars. From 2017-2020, we found no evidence of “czars” on Trump’s payroll.
However, Biden has czar(ed) up – naming at least 21 czars to date, with plans to fill 55 positions. These include: National Climate Advisor Regina McCarthy ($180,000) and a Special Envoy for Climate, John Kerry – who is listed in press accounts, but doesn’t appear in the payroll data. Others include Jeff Zients ($36,000), the COVID-19 czar.
Critics at Politico have already questioned, “How many czars does the Biden administration need?”
A “National Climate Advisor” making ninety dollars an hour … and folks wonder what keeps climate alarmism alive and well? Simple answer? You and I keep it going with our taxpayer dollars, via government funding of politicians, universities, and scientists.
Quote The Fourth—University Megabucks
TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK: Climate Smart Cities Pilot Project: New York City Green Infrastructure and Coastal Protection for Staten Island and Jamaica Bay. $127,280.00
BROWN UNIVERSITY IN PROVIDENCE IN STATE OF RI: Reconstruction of the Climate History of Mars shows that in past history, significant volumes of water are predicted to be transported from polar ice deposits. $501,566.00
KEY FINDINGS: $27.9 million in contracts funded different variations of ‘climate’ and ‘climate change’ studies.
Half a megabuck to “reconstruct the climate history of Mars”? Nice work if you can get it, but I’m not seeing that as a pressing problem when we are trillions of dollars in debt … and the idea that Mars is part of US “infrastructure” is totally out of this world.
Quote The Fifth—The Environmental Protection Racket
The EPA loves lawyers. Nearly $1.2 billion in salary flowed to more than 1,000 lawyers since 2007. In fact, more money was spent on “General Attorneys” than on chemists, general health scientists, ecologists, chemists, microbiologists, geologists, hydrologists, toxicologists, biologists, physical scientists, and health physicists combined.
When the EPA is sued, the Department of Justice defends the EPA in court. So, why does the EPA need 1,020 lawyers? One reason is to advance the EPA’s anti-capitalist Environmental Justice movement and it’s $32 million in grants. Environmental Justice essentially declares that corporations are bad because the pollution from capitalism, through the effects of climate change, disproportionally harms minorities and the poor.
While the EPA self-righteously promotes Environmental Justice, the agency isn’t treating its senior workforce with economic justice. Nearly $1 billion was spent on the Senior Environmental Employment Program (SEE) to hire retired or unemployed seniors to use their life experience to better the environment. Under EPA directives, a senior civil engineer in Iowa is paid $12.87 per hour and many seniors make as little as $7.87 per hour.
This ‘senior pay’ program stands in stark contrast to the highly compensated EPA regular workforce. Seven out of every 10 EPA employees make over $100,000 per year and $144 million in performance bonuses were awarded since 2007. A few bonuses reached $60,000 a year.
The EPA also makes sure its enviro-warriors enjoy stylish accommodations. Last month at Forbes, we showcased the EPA purchase of over $92 million in luxury, high-end furniture leases, purchases, moving, and expenses.
Last week during the debate, Sanders issued a “climate change” clarion call. Little did taxpayers know the EPA already was amassing weapons. Now it’s time for taxpayers to arm themselves with facts and expose the EPA’s spending habits before we lose even more freedom to this overzealous and bloated federal agency.
Quote The Fifth—EPA Redux
I’m still trying to figure out how exactly it happens. How do you give someone billions of dollars and not check up on how it’s spent?
The government watchdog group OpentheBooks.com released some ugly data, detailing the fact that over the last decade, the Environmental Protection Agency spent $94.2 million on office furniture. We can’t fix Medicaid, we can’t fund healthcare for veterans, we can’t even give our soldiers the weapons they need to fight a 21st century war. But we sure can spend on comfortable chairs.
Actually, the chairs don’t even look that comfortable. You can go to HermanMiller.com, type in scissor chair and see what $2,683 per item will buy. Now I’m the first to admit I’m a penny pincher. I have a hard time spending more than $50 on furniture. I can’t even imagine dropping more than $2,000 on one piece. That’s the thing. It’s not enough the EPA spent money on new furniture. They had to go to designer companies, where things cost an insane amount. The swivel chairs you use at work? How much did they cost, $50? The EPA bought a set for $730 each. A pencil drawer, a simple case that holds the items, they spent $813.57 for each one.
And yet, the department and its supporters say the $8.139 billion budget isn’t enough. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said more money was needed to work on improving air quality, climate change and the health impacts of toxic chemicals. Without a budget increase, McCarthy told Congress, that couldn’t happen.
“The proposed budget of $8.6 billion seeks to further key work in addressing climate change and improving air quality, protecting our water, safeguarding the health and safety of the public from toxic chemicals, supporting the environmental health of communities, and working toward a sustainable environmental future for all Americans,” reads the EPA’s note to Congress, explaining why the department needs the extra money.
Now see, I look at all this and I do the math. You need at least $46.1 million more than Congress allocated, but you’ve had enough money over the last decade, roughly $9.4 million per year, to buy furniture. Maybe spend that on the actual needs and just go buy a regular chair? I mean, what could $94.2 million buy? You could more effectively monitor coal ash facilities by hiring more inspectors, so there’s not another coal ash spill like across the border in Eden or a situation like in Durango, Colorado last fall. Even if you hired extra inspectors for each of the 50 states, that wouldn’t add up to more than $10 million. The EPA wants to expand emissions testing, but doesn’t know how it could be funded. You know, I think that $94.2 million could help. It’s hard to argue that the EPA is looking out for the environment, when some of their largest purchases have been hardwood tables and a few sets of chairs. And now they want more money, with no restrictions on what to spend it on? I’m sure that’s all about addressing climate change and has nothing to do with buying a new $4,500 designer couch.
Note that this barely scratches the surface of the taxpayer money spent on a useless attempt to stop the climate from changing. Overall, from 1993 to 2014, just the US alone spent about $150 BILLION dollars on “climate science”.
From FY 1993 to FY 2014, government reports show that annual spending on “climate science” grew from $1.31 billion to $2.66 billon, for a total of $42.49 billion. Of this total, $0.64 billion came from the stimulus bill. Annual expenditures in this category over the period increased over 200%. During the same period, “other” climate-related expenditures (including tax credits) grew from $1.05 billion to $8.94 billion, for a total of $104.29 billion, with $25.5 billion coming from AARA. The increase in annual expenditures in this category was 850%.
If we combine both categories, total expenditures for the period grew from $2.35 billion to $11.59 billion, for a total of $146.78 billion, with $26.14 billion coming from ARRA. The increase in total annual expenditures was 490%.
The amount going to international assistance via UN groups grew from $201 million to $893 million in 2014—a 440% growth in annual expenditures.
When the budgets for FY 2015 & FY 2016 of the U.S. Global Change Research Program are included, the total expenditures for “climate science” from FY 1993 to FY 2016 come to $147.56 billion, with international assistance amounting to $8.24 billion.
SOURCE
Let me close with a mention that the “infrastructure” bill includes $7.5 billion dollars for electric car charging stations. When the US went from horse and buggy to gasoline cars, the government didn’t build the service stations. Why is the government in the charging business now? To make Elon Musk even wealthier, I suppose …
And that $7.5 billion is on top of existing things like tax rebates for charging stations, which can run up to a rebate of half the cost of the installation … paid for by you and me.
In any case, a Level II commercial charging station costs on the order of $10,000. So that’s enough to install 750,000 charging stations … paid for by you and me, of course. They charge at a rate of about 20kW, and if they’re running say a third of the time, it will take five new 1 GW nuclear plants to power them.
And how much will that change the charging equation? Well, Level II commercial chargers charge at a rate of 25 miles of driving per hour of charging. Assuming again that they are used a third of the time, that’s 54 billion miles worth of driving per year.
Which sounds like a lot … until you compare it to the 3.13 trillion miles driven in the US annually. Those chargers will cover a percent and three-quarters of the miles driven. And that in turn means that to switch over to 100% electric, the charging stations alone will cost almost half a trillion and will require 285 one gigawatt nuclear power plants to provide the power. And those plants will cost about $9 billion each, so toss in another $2.5 trillion for the plants.
Who’s gonna pay for all of that? Seems the genius climate alarmists haven’t factored any of that into their brilliant plans … and the answer is, likely nobody will want to pay for that. So prepare yourselves for more electrical brownouts and blackouts.
And what have we gotten for all those trillions of dollars? As our British cousins say, “Sweet Fanny Adams”, which translates into The Original Real Actual Authentic ‘Murican English as “Sweet F-All” …
Taxpayer dollars are the lifeblood of the climate alarmism scam. If those dried up, so would all of the hysteria and shouting.
Why would the hysteria stop? Because the real truth is, there is no climate emergency, and people are waking up and noticing that fact. Don’t be the last to get the memo …
My very best to everyone,
w.
The citation for “Open the Books” is great. Thanks for that!
The US government debt is now 108% of GDP and rising, the highest since the Second World War when it topped at about 120% (Trading Economics).
However the war years caused a huge supply and demand potential that over the following years generated an economic boom that rapidly corrected the debt.
That ain’t going to happen this time probably the reverse if the GND insanity proceeds, instead the debt will continue grow until … what?
Rampant runaway inflation. It’s almost inevitable when you print more money than the resources that you have.
Haven’t they already started raising interest rates?
That is hardly surprising given that Trump cut taxes and massively increased military spending. Similarly Bush managed to turn the Clinton era budget surpluses into massive deficits thanks to his pointless wars.
Nonsense:
US debt ends up as international assets or private citizen savings.
China spent a small slice of their US assets to ensure Biden won the presidency. So you could say well spent on their part.
The money in US bank accounts is OK providing it is not spent too fast to fuel inflation.
The Covid billions created in Australia has fuelled spectacular house price inflation.
With clamps being applied on US internal fossil fuel supplies, energy price inflation is on the cards. Carbon pricing is inflationary.
US enjoys a unique global position by creating the world currency. Most global trade is denominated in USD. Trading countries and international trading businesses hold USD assets so they can operate in the world economy. So some of the new money just gets soaked up by the increasing world trade.
Nearly all US international debt is denominated in USD so its debt can always be repaid when due; just by creating more debt at no cost. The problem only emerges if the rest of the world decide they do not need USD. I think China and Russia are working on that.
US dollar debt can always be repaid by the US government by printing, true.
But it doesn’t mean there isn’t a cost. That cost is the repatriation of the trillions of US dollars being used by non-Americans around the world today.
As Greenspan said: we can always repay, but we cannot guarantee the value of the dollars used to repay.
Let’s put it this way: US federal debt = $28T. It was $9T in 2007.
Total world GDP = $80T.
Do you see a problem here? We are well past the point where the rest of the world, in total, would have problems repaying just the US federal debt. Of course, they have their own debt as well.
We are getting to the point where the benefits of having debt denominated in US dollars becomes a problem: if foreigners stop using the US dollar for trade, petrodollar, hedge against their own governments etc – all those dollars are going to come flooding back.
That will make the past year plus inflation look like a picnic.
Perhaps because we are no where near peak oil?
The first car I bought got about 13 mpg.
The last one (a 2016 model) got 32 mpg. That same 2021 model does better, and many other autos are better still.
I’ll stop with that, because I really don’t understand the burr under your saddle.
A 1955 Chevrolet cost about $1750-1850. That was a high end Chevy.
Adjusted for inflation that is about $17,000 today. Effectively that is equality. A good new car has always been a substantial purchase for a middle class family in the USA.
P.S. despite the plastic, current cars are of MUCH higher quality than the old Bel Air. Gas mileage is just one improvement. It is just a huge difference in engineering, materials, methods of manufacture between then and now.
I liked this from the Future Planet link in the article.
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2014/03/31/environmental-disaster-human-resiliency-is-this-a-glimpse-into-a-cloud-of-possible-futures/
“Consider this sampling of voicemail topics: A doctor’s office calling a patient to report they have Chikungunya fever, a mosquito-borne illness familiar to Africa and Asia, found in Michigan in 2022; reminiscences from a young adult about the City Fields Mets stadium, now returned to marshland from chronic flooding, New York in 2030; a son calling home from JFK airport noting the elevated runways allowing the airport to remain operational as sea level rises, New York in 2033; marketing calls for incineration protection as firestorm season approaches in Sacramento 2041; food riots in Chicago in 2057…and the chronofacts keep coming in with more and more reports from the future.”
The histrionics are quite amusing. I wonder why they think NYC would build elevated runways if the city is flooded? Will the passengers be taking gondolas to hotels raised on stilts?
Michigan already has tons of mosquitoes and, worse, No-see-ums.
How do they survive now?
Riots in Chicago? So, same as now.
From the above article’s information attributed to the Open The Books website: the Biden administration “Hires include 320 female staffers ($28.9 million salaries) vs. 240 male staffers ($20.8 million salaries). In terms of top staffers — Special Assistants — there are 52 female ($6.3 million salaries) vs. 10 males ($1.2 million).”
Hmmmm . . . in terms of looking for gender equality, that’s a ratio of 1.33 females for every male at the staff level and 5.2 female Special Assistants for every male Special Assistant.
Furthermore, assuming uniform pay for each gender class, female staffers are being paid $90,313 each whereas male staffers are being paid only $86,667 each, or about 4% less. And Special Assistant females average $121,154 each in salary versus Special Assistant males averaging $120,000 each in salary.
Both Biden and Harris made great speeches and promises to the US public about striving for gender equality and equal pay for equal work as part of their campaign “promises to America” if elected to high office. Clearly, it simply is not happening.
Oh, well, the gullible US citizens should have known better . . . as the saying goes, “their lips were moving”.
Equality is so yesterday. Equity is the fashion. You don’t know what it is? Kamala Harris had a beautiful illustration on her Twitter page – unfortunately, it has been replaced with something not as idiotic. Equality means an equal opportunity, but equity means equal results – everybody will be a famous footballer.
This dystopian project, called Future Coast, also includes a game where people search for fictional fallen “chronofacts” that fall out of time.
Includes a game… Wow…
You know what else includes games? STEAM.
Seriously, why get government funding to create a game when you could just spend a lazy hour on Steam shifting through the indy developers until you find one pushing the same themes (and yes, those games do exist) and then contracting out that dev team to do what they are already doing.
Oh wait, government funding… aka Money you never have to justify. Sorry, forget all I suggested.
Government destroys everything it controls. Since the demise of Federalism post Civil War, since the execrable Federal Income Tax, since the rise of non-term limited careerist politicians the US has imploded into a totalitarian State with command and control of its corporate collaborators i.e. fascism. There can be no peaceful resolution to this problem as the history of mankind shows.
Impress the young learners with buildings with climate change written all over and departments dedicated to fear might work. Drain the public’s income with taxes to pay for the impossible to achieve rather than allow the market place to decide will not work.
The idea that government is supreme over the people is in stark contrast to the first truth put forth in the US Constitution! We the people. We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
The founders did not ordain uncontrolled power to themselves as a king but to the people. Limited power applied with integrity is.
In the bizarre world of Biden, bizarre czars don’t seem to be too bizarre so far! He and the progressives are on a roll. What can they possibly think up next?