@JustinTHaskins Climate doomers really hate the 30s. Massive heat spike followed by massive decline. It has to proven as an "isolated" event, like the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warming period. Those were "limited in scope" despite the fact that we lived through those historical periods.
Before the weekend ends and America moves on to the next headline, we need to pause and look at a story that matters more than almost any other—the collapse of Venezuela, and what it warns us about if the last democratic superpower ever falls the same way.
This didn’t happen overnight. It happened step by step, over one generation.
VENEZUELA: HOW A PROSPEROUS NATION COLLAPSED
1992
Venezuela is the 3rd richest country in the Western Hemisphere, powered by oil and a growing middle class.
1997
Venezuelans become the 2nd largest buyers of Ford F-150s—a sign of widespread prosperity.
1998
Hugo Chávez is elected, promising to “redistribute wealth” and fix inequality.
2001
The country votes again for socialism, framed as compassion and fairness.
2003
The government imposes price controls and currency controls.
Black markets appear. Shortages begin.
2004
Private healthcare is fully socialized.
2006
Inflation rises sharply as massive welfare programs expand without real economic backing.
2007
All higher education becomes “free.”
2008
Key industries—oil services, steel, cement, telecom—are nationalized.
Production drops almost immediately.
2009
Private gun ownership is banned.
2010
The currency is devalued by 50%, crushing savings and accelerating inflation.
2011
Oil production begins a steady decline due to mismanagement and lack of investment.
2012
American politicians, like Bernie Sanders, publicly praise Venezuela’s model.
2013
Chávez dies. Nicolás Maduro takes power and tightens state control.
2014
Opposition leaders are arrested or silenced.
2015
GDP collapses. Hyperinflation begins.
2016
Severe food and medical shortages spread nationwide.
2017
The constitution is suspended. Elections are no longer meaningful.
2018
Inflation exceeds 1,000,000%. Maduro “wins” a widely fraudulent election.
2019
Unarmed civilians are killed by their own government.
2020
More than 8 million people flee the country to escape hunger and repression.
2023
Minor economic improvements fail to relieve mass poverty.
2024
Disputed elections trigger protests and global isolation.
2026
Maduro is removed by force. Venezuela is liberated after decades of ruin.
THE HARD TRUTH
It took one generation of “progressive” leadership to turn one of the richest countries on Earth into a nation defined by hunger, fear, mass graves, and mass migration.
This is the lesson history keeps teaching:
You can vote your way into socialism.
But history shows people only escape it through collapse, violence, or foreign intervention.
And here is the part Americans must understand clearly:
If this happens in the United States, there will be nobody coming to save us.
No outside superpower.
No rescue force.
No second chance.
Freedom is fragile. Prosperity is not guaranteed.
And once lost, they are brutally hard to recover.
Venezuela’s people paid the price.
America cannot afford to learn this lesson the same way.
So many people—myself included—are drawn to the climate movement because they want to help people. They care, want to help the poor, and save the planet. But what they don't understand is that the climate movement is doing the exact opposite of what these well-meaning activists want to accomplish.
The movement vilifies reliable energy—the single biggest driver of getting people out of poverty.
Over the past several decades, we’ve spent trillions on an energy transition away from fossil fuels. The result? We’ve made our energy system less reliable and more expensive.
Western countries have also practiced climate colonialism by preventing Africa from developing with natural gas, coal, and oil. (This goes against everything climate activists claim to stand for!)
This is the most morally inverted movement ever.
Right now, a billion people don't have access to reliable energy. That means women are spending their entire day figuring out how to get fuel to cook their food. Children in these settings are not going to school, they’re spending hours collecting wood or walking to get water. All of that is a symptom of energy poverty.
This is when climate activists will say “but the planet is burning!” Just no. The planet is not burning. Yes, we've added CO2 to the atmosphere and seen about ~1°C of warming over 150 years. But 95% of CO2 is naturally occurring and historically, warming periods are when humans flourish. The Medieval Warm Period (900–1300 AD) is a great example. It was 0.7-1°C warmer and populations boomed. They then collapsed during the Little Ice Age.
Takeaway the climate hysteria and objectively you would choose to live during a warming period over a cooling period.
The rest of the data is reassuring:
✅Globally hurricanes rates are slightly declining
✅Tornadoes are down
✅Sea level rise is a manageable ~3mm/year
✅Global greening is up 15–40% since the 1980s
✅10x people still die from cold than from heat
In the West the first time students hear about our energy system is within the context of “fossil fuels are burning the planet.” They’re never taught that it’s an amazing technology that has lifted billions out of poverty. I considered this a huge injustice.
We need to pivot away from climate hysteria toward one goal: ending energy poverty and expanding access to energy.
If you’re still gripped by climate fear and anxiety, I’m sorry you are a victim of this fear narrative. But it's time to get out.
Climate has been utterly hijacked by enraged and misleading media sensationalism.
The world may be getting warmer in places, cooler in others - but its also getting greener. The expansion of plant life and global agriculture confirms it—exactly what we should expect to see in the fertile stages of a late interglacial warm period.
Local variations across regional climate zones worldwide are part of Earth’s natural variability, not symbols of a runaway crisis. Yet, you wouldn't know it. The media has become a babbling talkfest machine, droning on with messages of doom.
Look at the visuals they feed us: media headlines overlaying background maps smeared with blood reds and bright oranges, look at this image of France. Every report screams extreme. No wonder the public is tuning out.
The core science has a more balanced story. For example, rising CO₂ does not mean soaring temperatures. As mapped in this image, atmospheric CO₂ is strictly logarithmic. Each additional molecule has less impact than the one before it—a reality the scientific community itself acknowledges in its core equations. It means every doubling of CO₂ delivers a constantly diminishing increment of energy.
There are dangers along the way. CO₂ plunged to near-asphyxiation levels of 190 ppm during the Last Glacial Maximum 20,000 years ago—dangerously close to the 150 ppm floor where plant life dies.
Nature itself restored the biosphere—and we are seeing that inbuilt resilience in action once again.
@PeterDClack The Sierra Club used to promote nuclear energy in order to save wild rivers. Now they have changed for fear of gas that makes forests happy and green! Let's imagine for a moment that CO2 was rising naturally, what a miracle this would be considered by ecologists.
Few of the hundreds of thousands of wind turbines already built will make it past 17 years in full working order.
The several billions of solar panels might make it to 20 years before they too also succumb to the laws of physics, nature and unavoidable decay. This is only a hint of the staggering mountains of recyclable waste lying ahead as exploding production just carries on regardless of the ultimate landfill pileup quagmire.
Colossal artificial forests of legacy turbines and solar panels will ultimately stop working and need costly replacements. Rusting and decaying offshore turbines in harsh marine environments are a perfect example of this cycle of decay.
What will the world do with the 7-8 billion solar panels already in environmental decay? What about the 1.3 million strong global turbine gridlock—so far? The world already faces an estimate of 43 million tons of decommissioned wind turbine blades alone—by the headlong rush of Net Zero in 2050. This small portion of the emerging e-waste catastrophe is the equivalent in weight to 215,000 locomotives.
Super-strength turbine blades the size of 747 airliners are made from almost indestructible high-strength composites designed to survive decades of brutal weather and notoriously difficult to recycle. They were built to last, but not to disappear.
They were meant to last 20 to 24 years before wearing out. But the 150,000 to 200,000 turbines built between 1990 and 2010 are already at the end of their working lives. Each lofty structure weighs 200 to 400 metric tonnes on average, of steel, concrete and composite plastics, metals and rare earths. Who will foot the bill to put these carcasses to rest forever in scattered graveyards?
Burying dead blades is the only solution, even in regions with abundant space like the US. Several European nations, such as Germany and the Netherlands, have actively banned this practice.
Renewables or bust? Ironic, isn't it.
@PeterDClack Even if wind and solar could last for 50 years, they still require a backup energy source which will be penalized by running inefficiently to mirror the start/stop intermittency and also getting paid below market because wind sets the price when its running at peak power.
Eric Weinstein: Markets are the most precious thing we have and AI will destroy that by asorbing everthing that humanity has produced without our permission https://t.co/FzMxazpQ2x via @YouTube
𝐏𝐎𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐀𝐓 𝟑𝟎%, 𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐑 𝐏𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐓 𝐆𝐎𝐓 𝐙𝐄𝐑𝐎 𝐕𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐀 𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇 𝐎𝐅 𝟐𝟒,𝟎𝟎𝟎 — 𝐋𝐎𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐒 𝐈𝐒 𝐁𝐑𝐎𝐊𝐄𝐍
Spencer Pratt has been polling around 30% in the race for Los Angeles mayor. In one late-night update, 24,000 ballots dropped. Pratt’s share: 𝐳𝐞𝐫𝐨. 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐚 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐞. The statistical probability of a candidate at 30% support receiving zero votes out of 24,000 ballots is, as the host put it, “𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺. 𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘧𝘭𝘪𝘱𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘴 𝘢 𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘳𝘰𝘸 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘨𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘚𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘢𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦.”
𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐚 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐲. Ballots trickling in for days after election night. Signatures reviewed by partisan workers with no independent oversight. Voter rolls that have never been seriously audited. Drop boxes with no real-time monitoring. And a state that made it a crime to audit the results from outside. Every mechanism that could catch fraud has been removed. Every mechanism that could hide it has been reinforced.
Democrats called the SAVE Act “voter suppression.” The SAVE Act would require proof of citizenship to register, ID to vote, and clean voter rolls. It 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝟐𝟏𝟖—𝟐𝟏𝟑 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬. Not one of those two votes was about fraud prevention. They were about keeping the system exactly as it is.
Spencer Pratt at 30% getting zero votes from 24,000 ballots is California in miniature. It’s what happens when one party controls the elections, counts the votes, and certifies the results without transparency. The SAVE Act didn’t fail because it was wrong. It failed because the people it threatens had the votes to k∗ll it.
𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐚 𝐭𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚 𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐰 𝐢𝐟 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐬.
@Mamabenergy2@JamesOKeefeIII Jail is usually the only thing that helps. 2-3 months with medical treatment in a separate population. Then a bus ticket home to your family. It is really hard to kick, but much harder on the street where the solution to your pain is 5 dollars.
Billions of solar panels are nearing their end-of-life cycle, and the world is completely unprepared for the coming toxic avalanche.
By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects up to 78 million metric tons of useless and toxic solar e-waste. Where is it all going to go?
The industry boasts that solar panels are '95% recyclable'. Technically, yes - because they are made of glass, aluminum and copper. But economics always trumps physics. In Australia and the US, it costs roughly $20 to $40 to disassemble and recycle a single panel, but only around $4 to dump it in landfill.
Because there is no financial incentive, up to 90% of decommissioned panels go straight into the ground. There are between 7 and 8 billion solar panels in the world today. This milestone was reached as global solar capacity officially surpassed 2 Terawatts (TW).
Because the physical wattage of individual panels varies from small 300W residential rooftop modules to massive 600W utility-scale panels, 2 TW of total energy capacity translates to roughly 7 billion individual panels currently installed worldwide.
Each solar panel is an industrial 'sandwich' bound tightly by heavy polymers. To extract the microscopic amounts of valuable silver and high-purity silicon requires energy-intensive chemical and thermal baking.
When they are crushed or left to fracture in landfills, heavy metals like lead and cadmium (in thin-film technologies) can leach into the surrounding soil and groundwater, turning 'clean energy' into a multi-generational hazardous waste problem.
The crisis is accelerating faster than models predicted. Because solar cells degrade and lose efficiency, and newer, cheaper panels hit the market, consumers and solar farms are ripping out functional systems at least a decade early to upgrade.
This compressed lifecycle destroys the narrative of a long-term, stable asset and creates an endless loop of unrecyclable industrial trash.
Let’s zoom out and look at what the climate movement is actually asking of us.
They’re asking us to dismantle the fossil fuel energy system that has produced the greatest abundance in human history. Because of a byproduct called CO2—a plant food that NASA satellites show has contributed to 50% more green cover across the globe.
All because of a fear that extreme weather like droughts, hurricanes, and flooding will get worse, sea-levels will rise steeply, and crops will suffer. But the empirical data from the last 40 years shows none of that is actually happening. Crop yields are at record highs, extreme weather shows no change, and sea-level is rising at a steady 3mm/year.
Still, the argument goes, maybe someday in the future things could get worse. So we need to spend trillions transitioning off reliable, abundant, energy-dense fossil fuels onto unreliable, land-hungry technologies like solar and wind.
We have to do this with taxpayer money. Not because voters chose it—but because governments are mandating it.
And here’s the kicker: it won’t even work. The countries adopting net-zero goals represent a fraction of global emissions. China and India are still developing fossil fuels as fast as they can—and cheap energy is pulling our manufacturing straight to them. Every country that guts its fossil fuel infrastructure will make itself poorer, hollow out its industrial base, and kill jobs—while global emissions keep rising.
Oh, and because solar and wind are intermittent, we still need backup gas and oil infrastructure on standby for when the wind stops blowing or the sun stops shining. So we’re paying for both systems.
And nuclear—the most energy-dense, reliable, zero-emission power source we have—is also off the table.
Did I get that right?
@PeterDClack Nature's default process for CO2 is sequestration in limestone, coal, etc. Life builds structures that dy and, more often than not get buried at the bottom of the sea. This process doesn't have a biospheric geological balance save for our need for fuel. Power. Energy.
@PeterDClack The albedo effect of snow increases cooling during glaciation has been theorized to hit a tipping point when CO2 in the atmosphere is so low that higher altitudes in the tropics turn to dusty plains that blow albedo decreasing dust around the world much like Amazon fertilization?