We are lucky in our neighborhood to have a natural gas line serving all of our houses. Most people living in the foothills use propane, and while it too is convenient, we never have to worry about that huge hit they take when it is time to fill a 500 gallon tank. Natural gas is clean, giving off less in the way of pollutants such as carbon monoxide, SO2 and NO2. Oh, and it also gives off CO2, the much maligned but beneficial byproduct of all fossil fuels.
And, part of my retirement plan was to buy an interest in some natural gas wells. I used to hold a working interest in maybe twenty wells, but sold them all due to what I felt was overexposure to risk. These wells cost tens of thousands of dollars to plug, and things like replacement of tubing strings are expensive propositions. I was under-capitalized. So I sold the “working interest” portion of the wells, keeping much smaller (and risk free) royalty interests. Prices were depressed at that time, so I took opportunity and made a fair offer to purchase a one-third interest in two very stable wells with projected lives exceeding 70 years. That is much longer than my projected life, and a very good deal for our grandchildren.
Since all of this has happened, prices have rebounded, and my decision to sell my other working interests looks like a bad deal. But it was not. I only knew what I knew at the time, that prices were very low and prospects of plugging three or four of the wells high. I stand by that decision as the best I could have made knowing what I knew at the time. On the other hand, the two one-third interests I purchased are performing solidly. I paid a price for them that I calculated would return my investment in four years. In February of 2022, when Texas windmills seized, natural gas had to be fired up to rescue business and homeowners in that state. Prices skyrocketed, and that one lone month returned my purchase price.
So I am having a love affair with natural gas. We use it to heat our home and cook our food. And it feeds my retirement. Anyway, I obviously have a conflict of interest in regards to natural gas, and now it is in the open.
Environmentalists make no sense, but then, they do not have to. There is no one fact-checking them other than Climate Change Deniers (skeptics) and we receive no news coverage.
This is taken from a New York Times op-ed by Farhad Manjoo (it is behind a pay wall), claiming the following:
“About 13 percent of cases of childhood asthma in the United States may be attributable to gas cooktops, a recent study found — a population-level effect similar to that of exposure to secondhand smoke.”
This from Kip Hansen of CO2 Coalition::
What is the “recent study”? “Population Attributable Fraction of Gas Stoves and Childhood Asthma in the United States by Talor Gruenwald, Brady A. Seals, Luke D. Knibbs and H. Dean Hosgood III, which was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health which is an ”open access journal published semimonthly online with article processing charges (APC) paid by authors or their institutions.” Some would interpret this to mean a “pay-to-play online journal”.
The two lead authors are attached to Rocky Mountain Institute, an outfit founded by radical environmentalist Amory Lovins. The other two are epidemiologists, so it is safe to say that this attack on natural gas is activist driven. This article, by Hansen, details some of the research shortcomings in the mindlessly repeated accusation that gas stoves are contributing to increased childhood asthma. To save the reader from reading the article (most links are left unclicked, and I am guilty of that habit as well), I will summarize his findings.
Did this study actually measure children’s exposure to gas stoves, water heaters and furnaces (or any pollution that they might have caused) in the homes in which children suffered from asthma? No, of course not. Did this study actually measure any homes for NO2 levels and connect this to children’s asthma? No, of course not.
Did those studies [referenced in the Gruenwald et al] actually measure the real-world exposure of any children to pollution caused by the us of gas appliances in homes of children who suffered from asthma? Not that I can find. …[Of 27 referenced studies] none reported new associations between gas stove use and childhood asthma specifically in North America or Europe.”
The Gruenwald et al paper refers to a 2013 meta analysis …
The 2013 study uses data from a number of even earlier studies, such as a 1978 study that did actually measured [sic] NO2 levels and found that NO2 levels in homes that had gas cooking or heating in children’s bedroom to average 0.03 ppm while ambient outdoor air in the neighborhood had NO2 levels of 0.02 ppm. We have to wonder at the tremendous power of that extra 1/100th of a part per million to damage children’s health.
Bottom line: Gas cooking stoves are blamed for children’s respiratory illnesses, like asthma, widely in the literature. Almost none of the studies actually measure the exposure of the child to the putative cause: hours exposed to how much gas stove use; measure NO2 levels in the home, whether there are multiple gas appliances in the home (water heaters, clothes dryer, heating appliance), or ambient NO2 in the child’s outdoor environment or school. Many of the studies failed to note or take into account parental smoking in the home.
This is my point exactly, that the enemies of fossil fuels are allowed to say anything, and no one will call them on it. The science of Climate Change is a sloppy collection of agreed upon lies, the scientists standing in a circle and talking to each other while patting each other on the back. It is a disgrace, and testimony to this 2020 study that found that science skepticism has grown to 35% of the population.
Unfortunately, none of that 35% works in the news media, which mindlessly repeats every outlandish claim of Climate Alarmists.
Piece of Mindful 
Amidwesterndoctor.substack.com ran this interesting chart recently –
A visual representation of how controlled science has become (if their methods are sound.) She got it from this long article I haven’t read –
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2023/01/12/what-is-corruption-and-why-does-it-matter-so-much/
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I know that secretly, you admire her.
“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against — then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can be neither observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted — and you create a nation of law-breakers — and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.” [from Atlas Shrugged]
Use a gas stove, get arrested.
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Another example marijuana laws.
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A LETTER TO A GENERATION
The current horrors will not be stopped by politicians and/or lawyers. Those efforts were tried unsuccessfully during the Vietnam era, which you may be too young to remember. They will never work today despite wonderful analytical essays, websites, conferences, etc.
Here is a little history from a guy turning 90 this year: There was a “dress rehersal” for Vietnam around 20 years earlier in Korea that somewhat affected my own life. All “civilized” efforts and actions to stop the massive bloodshed in Vietnam failed utterly. Jim Rhodes (Gov. of Ohio, guy whose Sunday NY Times was saved by me where I worked on weekends, who was then State Auditor and spent lots of time chatting with me at the store’s soda counter, whom I considered to be a marginally intelligent largely uneducated clod) called out the Ohio National Guard that shot and killed four students, wounding eight others, at Kent State University, where there was only a small anti-war demonstration. Believe it or not, the public was overwhelmingly against the students, not the Guard. The war went on. The famous Peace Symbol was viewed as despicable. Given that atmosphere, how in heck could that war be brought to an end? But it was, and here is how that happened:
College students held military draft cards. When any war protest arose they were happy to support it. Many fled to Canada to avoid being dreafted and sent to the jungles of Vietnam. The antiwar protest was a campus centered thing, beginning at the Univ. of Wisconsin, it spread to the large state colleges, and then to Berkeley in CA, Columbia in NYC, and elsewhere. Christian clerics became outspoken protesters, throwing animal blood around a draft board office. People chained themselves to columns of govt. bldgs in DC, riots erupted and violence (against property, not humans) erupted throughout the country.
That is what really ended the war. VIOLENCE AND LOTS OF IT. I left my job, taking earned vacation time, in NYC to return to my college (Ohio State Univ., in Columbus, Ohio), growing a ponytail, and joined the kids. There used to be a photo of me online with a burning police car in the background (maybe it is still there, I might search for it). Of course, nice conservative Americans were horrified and unsupportive. BUT IT STOPPED THE WAR. Here is how:
Every year a bill came up in Congress to fund the war. America’s industrialists and, particularly, their bankers, were profiting well. The annual bill was euphemistically titled something like “funding for aid to S. Vietnam”. Guess what! When then President Ford sent it back for signing, he was shocked and amazed that the politicians (although compromized as ever) declined to sign it. There was no more money to continue the war. Simple as that. Over fifty thousand young men had been killed. Tens of thousands of others had been injured, crippled, and damaged in other ways.
You might wonder, why did the guys in Congress not sign the bill, as usual? Here is the simple truth: THEY WERE TERRIFIED TO RETURN TO THEIR HOMES IF THEY SIGNED IT. Their hometowns were partially ablaze. We did that. VIOLENCE STOPPED THE BLOODSHED, not philosophy, peace marches, essays (The NY Review of Books had great anti-war articles by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and others, most of which the average rioter never read). car signs, T-shirts, etc. Without the VIOLENCE who knows how much further and longer the Pentagon might have gone?
You have the idea. Push http://www.bigeye.org/internet.htm
We don’t need petitions, a vote, more talk, etc. In fact, that just encourages the bastards, letting them know that all is well for them. We need to do the job through online recruitment and positive action regardless of what others think or say. There are enough persons using the internet today that when our program becomes unacceptable to the usual suspects we will have provided the seeds for massive organized resistance. Perhaps violence (against property only) will be unnecessary. However, remember the Vietnam era. Look up the speech by Mario Savio in California. It is applicable again today.
Note: Just so you don’t have to look it up, here are Mario’s closing remarks:
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”
Are YOU going to help us? http://www.bigeye.org/internet.htm
xxx
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Destroying Government property, buildings and infranstructure would work to a certain degree as they wouldn’t want to keep spending money on repairs But Kent State seems to be a hoax.
Click to access kent.pdf
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I have to wonder, as myself, not wanting to be in the military, what I might do to simply go to Canada. Do I pull up roots, go to a foreign county, get a low level job? Who would hire me? It does not track.
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