For those who think that the federal courts are a hopeless miasma of insanity, it's time for an update on the Stupidest Litigations in the Country.  Things may not be quite as bad as you have thought up to now.

If you have a short memory, let me remind you that in December 2017 and January 2018 the Manhattan Contrarian made two nominations for the illustrious title of "Stupidest Litigation in the Country."  In both cases, the nominations went to litigations seeking to get some federal judge to issue a sweeping order of some kind to hinder or stop the use of fossil fuels and thereby save the climate and the planet.  The first nomination for the award, made in this post on December 12, 2017, went to the case of Kelly Cascadia Rose Juliana v. United States.  That's the case out of Oregon where some 21 minors, mostly teenagers, plus a rather large nameless contingent labeled "future generations," have sued the U.S. government seeking to compel the complete end to the use of all fossil fuels in this country.  Hey, they just want to prevent "the irreversible destruction of the natural heritage of our whole nation."   What could be more noble than that?  Isn't that what the federal courts are for?  Nomination number two came just over a month later on January 24, 2018.  It went to the cases filed first by a group of California cities, and then followed on January 9 by New York City, seeking massive damages against five major oil companies for the "public nuisance" of producing and selling oil and natural gas.

A phenomenon often noted on this site is that the jurisdictions that get the highest proportion of their electricity from so-called "renewables" seem to have the highest consumer electricity prices.  But wait -- aren't the wind and the sun "free"?  Capture your electricity from these "free" sources, and it just seems obvious that your cost of electricity will plummet.  

And yet when you look for evidence of actual prices charged to consumers you find that the more electricity you get from the wind and the sun, the higher your retail costs of electricity will soar.

In a post a few days ago, I noted that "the whole climate issue seems to have mostly disappeared from the news lately."  Commenter niceguyeddie responded by giving me a link to the Washington Post (eddie called it "the 'other' Pravda"), and an article of July 5 by a guy named Jason Samenow headlined "Red-hot planet: All-time heat records have been set all over the world during the past week."   In the intervening week since this article, a few people on the internet have been busy making mincemeat of Samenow's rather pitiful effort.  For MC readers who don't go out searching the internet regularly for real information on climate to combat the propaganda from the various Pravdas out there, I thought I would do the public service of presenting some of this real information here.

First, some basic background is needed to develop appropriate bullshit radar on this subject.  If you follow climate or weather information even a little, you will already know that on any given day, somewhere in the world, some weather station, or more likely multiple stations, is recording an "all time high" temperature for the particular day in question, while some other weather station, or maybe multiple stations, is recording an "all time low."  It follows that the fact that multiple "all time high" records were set during the course of a week tells you nothing about climate change.  There could have been even more all time lows, and the overall average could have gone down, no matter how many "all time highs" were recorded.  Any reader of any intelligence whatsoever will immediately be asking, don't just tell me about "all time highs," but tell me what is the overall picture?  How many all time lows were there?  What is happening with the "average" temperature?  You will not be surprised to learn that Samenow does not provide the answers to those questions.  In other words, his article is not intended to provide useful information to the intelligent reader, but rather to propagandize those lacking in either basic background information or critical thinking ability or both.

There is an obvious source for the answer to the last question as to what is happening with the "average," and that is the easily-available UAH global lower troposphere record, derived from satellite sensors.  That record exists from 1979 to present.

The Climate Wars continue to rage.  In Washington, EPA Director Scott Pruitt has been driven from office, supposedly over a series of ethical issues.  All of them seemed exceedingly debatable and insignificant to me.  On the other hand, Pruitt must have known that the full force of the environmental left was gunning for him, so there was no excuse for errors, however minor.   Pruitt will be succeeded by Andrew Wheeler, another professed climate change skeptic.

Perhaps this is a good time to take stock of where things are going on the "climate change" front.  Have you noticed that the whole climate issue seems to have mostly disappeared from the news lately?  That could only mean one thing:  the latest information does not fit the preferred narrative.  Let's look at the news that you won't be finding in the New York Times or on CNN.