In Case You Missed the Halki Summit


On global warmclimate change that is. It was late, last month.

This lovely photo of the Parthenon, on Athens’ Acropolis Hill, is a nice reminder that just because all the right people say that we are facing a global crisis, doesn’t mean that it is so.

Just putting that out there apropos of nothing at all.

In the meantime, pray for the people of Texas. Looks like 20 percent of their energy is the result of wind turbines. Unfortunately, the turbines froze. Fortunately, this could very well be the final nail in the coffin of the Green New Deal and all other such non-realistic absurdities. (Next up: men playing in women’s sports?)

Prediction: after this is all over, the Texans (and other realists) will make sure to reorient their grid to fossil fuels. Which for some reason are never as dependent upon other conditions as all the “green stuff” that we were promised.

Anyway, I wonder if Patriarch Bartholomew’s brain trust will get the news. After all, they should: Athens isn’t that far from Istanbul.

Comments

  1. Texas dealing with record cold, snow in Athens and Jerusalem. Maybe I’m getting this global warming thing wrong, but, maybe it has to get colder before warmer (or whatever logic they’re using now).

    In ecclesiastical news, Serbia has elected their new patriarch, Porfirije. Let’s pray he continues the work of Pat. Irinej of blessed memory + and remains strong against Pat. Bartholomew, the Ukrainian schismatics and the U.S State Department

  2. Austin Martin says

    No, this is not the “final nail in the coffin”, because none of this was ever about global warming. Every secular-left issue is always a distraction for something else (and frankly so are most religious right issues). The satanic left will be preaching global warming twice as hard after this. Your fallacy is that you assume that these people are grounded in reality a single iota, when actually they hate truth of any kind because it burns them.

    If the globalists can do something to hurt us, they will do it. Ruining the energy system will hurt us. Therefore they will double the windmills and continue producing vegetarian “meat”.

    They now know that they don’t actually need votes to win an election, so they have even less reason to care what we think.

    • Michael Bauman says

      Folks, “global warming” was proved incorrect years ago. “Man-made climate change” (how gender biased is that) has been the mantra. That can be made to fit any human extermination plan the evil one tempts people into imaginning.

      Lord have mercy.

      • Understand the green crap for what it is, it’s a religion. It’s what happens when you abandon God and, no, Christians cannot be environmentalists. Environmentalism is idolatry and the “good stewardship” excuse is just a rationalization to feel good. Get over it.

        • Michael Bauman says

          dan, you are correct. Environmentalism is a religion OT style. Comes complete with commandments, Pharisees, etc. But so do all the othe ….isms. Especially the systemic ones.

          That does not diminish the Christian requirement to dress and keep the earth given to us in Genesis 2 to be good stewards of the Creation. .

          • How can stewardship of the environment not be a concern for Orthodox Christians? As humans given the responsibility by God to care for His creation, do we not have any responsibility, or can we just do as we please? I am so troubled by the labels/name calling I see in this group. Many Orthodox Christians who concerned about what we, as a human race, are doing to God’s creation. Do you read the Psalms, one of the most important “prayer books” of the Orthodox Church? All of God’s creation praises Him–the sun, the moon, the stars, the animals… And we humans, created in the image and likeness of God, have been given the awesome responsibility of caring for all of His creation. How can our belief in a loving, saving and merciful God not be foundational for appropriate care of His creation? May God have mercy on us all.

            • Jmg,

              Your words have merit in the following sense.

              The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come,
              And the time of the dead, that they should be judged,
              And that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints,
              And those who fear Your name, small and great,
              And should destroy those who destroy the earth.

              -Rev. 11:18

              But as Michael Bauman wrote, the fact that environmentalism (and worse yet the ideology of ‘climate change’) is godless…

              “… does not diminish the Christian requirement to dress and keep the earth given to us in Genesis 2 to be good stewards of the Creation.”

              Surely you can perceive the radical difference between this and the ideology of environmentalism that views the environment for man’s sake alone (without regard for it being the gift of God for which we are to be grateful and offer back to God in thanksgiving). Or worse it is viewed as an idol to be worshipped – one to which man himself is to be sacrificed for its sake.

              No one destroys that for which he is thankful. The sin that destroys the earth is man’s refusal to give thanks for it. Creation groans under the tyranny of this refusal to see it for gift it is and to facilitate its renewal through his priestly role of offering it to the One who fills all things with His life.

              Surely you can see how foreign this Christian understanding is from fretting over carbon emissions, etc. We are stewards, not masters, of that which belongs to God; and, when offered to Him, it is empowered by His grace – ever renewed for our sakes out of His love for us and for all His creation.

            • Matthew Panchisin says

              Dear JMG,

              “I am so troubled by the labels/name calling I see in this group.”

              “In sociology and psychology, mass hysteria (also known as mass psychogenic illness, collective hysteria, group hysteria, or collective obsessional behavior) is a phenomenon that transmits collective illusions of threats, whether real or imaginary, through a population and society as a result of rumors and fear.”

              I have read that there are children (created in the image and likeness of God) that suffer from anxiety disorders since climate change is an “existential crisis”. Their teachers and their parents tell them that in addition with their transgender delusions etc. Now that is, is something you should be so troubled by. We are aware of the fact that those within the far left are going after the kids. What should we call them? Progressives?

              There is a big difference that is noticed between fear mongering over a virus or tree huggers regarding the environment and our health relative to stewardship of the earth and our bodies and minds.

              Such are the days we live in keeping in mind that the Lord is the Lord of all. “He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together”

              Jeff bezos is big on the environment and climate change while his Amazon flows tons of plastic waste into all the oceans on earth.

              We should not call him out as a hypocrite, see and put him in the polluters of the oceans group. I think he has enough money to stop using plastic shipping materials, foam peanuts, air balloons etc.

              Shame on us.

            • So this is a common misunderstanding. Our goal as Christians is to repent and draw closer to God. Recycling campaigns and climate policy activism are not ascesis. The bottom line is that creation is a thing that will pass away and be replaced with a new heaven and earth. Our physical universe is wired for destruction, that is why environmentalists can only talk about sustainability, not creation ex out of nothing.

              Just like the “…idols of the nations are silver and gold, the handiwork of men, they have mouths that cannot speak, they have eyes that cannot see, they have ears that cannot hear. All who make them are like them, and there is no breath in their mouth…” so too environmentalism worships the creation and not the Creator.

            • George Michalopulos says

              jmg, you are falling into the trap of the straw man fallacy. No Christian, conservative, or traditionalist type of person of my acquaintance believes that we should be wastrels and wantonly despoil the environment. And that includes hunters and fishermen.

              Yes, it’s revealed in Scripture that we are to be stewards of the earth, but it’s also commonsensical as well.

    • If man is the primary cause of climate change, how come we can’t do something about this extreme cold?

      • Austin Martin says

        I love your screen name, by the way.

        I often tell liberal coworkers, “I hope you Democrats are right about global warming. I hate winter!”

        Then they say, “Global warming is real, Austin. It’s science.”

        I say, “Good! I hope so.”

        Al Gore made a ton of money lying to stupid people, whereas most people who lose the presidency just turn bitter and warped, and I sort of admire that in a way that I’m not condoning, but since his predictions have been proven false (namely that there would be no snow on Kilimanjaro by 2015), the biblical solution would be to stone all these people. And not the “get stoned” sense they are usually talking about.

    • George Michalopulos says

      Austin, it is a “nail in the coffin” as to effective action regarding climate change. I mean to say that these bozos will talk until they’re blue in the face regarding [insert latest fad here] hoping that they’ll be able to either virtue-signal or cadge funds from gullible people will give them. BUT when it comes to executing something politically –say, erecting more windmills in Texas–THAT’S a non-starter.

      I say let them go ahead and emit all them bloviate all they want while they emit Carbon Dioxide, as long as they’re wasting our time and not our tax dollars.

      • Austin Martin says

        I like to tell liberals at work, “I hope you Democrats are right about global warming. I hate winter.”

        They say very tiredly, “Global warming is real, Austin.”

        I say, “Good! I hope so.”

        • Austin Martin says

          Oh, sorry for posting the same joke twice. The first comment was delayed in posting, and I didn’t want the joke to go to waste. Just putting out to the anonymous internet people that I’m not the guy in the comments desperate for attention.

          All that being said, this idea that we’re being punished by Nature for driving cars, it’s a bit pagan, yes? You could imagine, dare I say, some Greeks sacrificing two sheep so that the Ouranos won’t make the weather too cold before the harvest, and supposedly capital-S Science is supposed to point out that the two have no connection, but Science also says that we have to wear masks and cancel church and allow the dregs of the third world to enter our suburbs or else the Helios will destroy our crops. It’s a wee pinch superstitious.

          And like the ancient Romans, they’re going to start brutally murdering Christians for not conforming.

  3. ‘S no snow. No…
    It’s Green Dandruff!

  4. The majority of Texas power generation problems are from the fossil fuel plants, and even some of the nuclear plants. Fossil fuel plants suffered not just plant failures due to the severe cold, but delivery failures due to the weather. Some nuclear plants lost capacity due to auxiliary system failures. Some wind capacity did go offline, but that was a relative drop in the bucket.

    Texas has long ignored warnings that this could happen and failed to modify its infrastructure to cope. Pretending climate change isn’t real and that there is no crisis has now caused billions of dollars in damage and a death toll that is yet to be determined.

  5. Well at least our required face masks help warm us up right? I mean if CO2 causes warming then what can be better than breathing our own CO2 over and over? ?

  6. Is it not the case that about 88% of the electricity supplied in Texas is from natural gas and/or coal power plants? In any case, Texas operates their own power grid so surely this is failure that should also be attributed to the Republican-led state government?

    From what I have read, the electrical grid in Texas was deregulated, privatised and removed from interconnected networks to avoid federal regulation and to increase profits to a small number of wealthy individuals. Texas suffered exactly the same problem back in 2011 – coal and natural gas plants went offline. Surely the state government should have anticipated this happening again and taking action to deal with this?

    If so, I doubt the wind turbines are the problem (they seem to work well in Antarctica or in Iowa (which had temperatures of -25C)) – the state government has apparently ignored the infrastructure for a long time.

    • Gail Sheppard says

      I heard the problem was not having enough gas because the state’s natural gas equipment is not designed to withstand such low temperatures. If they aren’t going to fix the problem, they’ll need to expand their nuclear capability. However, when legislators are committed wind turbines, any investment in fossil fuel or nuclear energy falls by the way side. So in that sense, wind turbines are the problem.

    • Exactly. In the end, you get what you pay for.

  7. As a Texan Orthodox Christian who just lived through this…. yes the freezing and failure of the turbines played a role. Also the natural gas pumps were frozen, which compounded it even further. We manage our own power grid, which is a good thing, as long as it is well managed.

    Texas’s energy system is just not made to be resilient to a massive weather event affecting the entire state all at once. It does get cold in north/northwestern Texas often in winter, but normally they can redirect energy from the Corpus Christi/Brownsville/Laredo regions in south Texas where it typically stays warmer. Not this time — the entire state was an icicle, all they way down to the gulf coast and the Rio Grande Valley.

    Most of us Texans had never heard of ERCOT before this week. Now we know more about ERCOT than we care to. Including that most ERCOT board members don’t even live in Texas!

    This week was bad. This was our version of a hurricane. You can bet your a** that if a hurricane plowed into the eastern USA, the alphabet networks would have carried it nonstop. Most of them don’t like Texas much, so while our power and water outages lasting for days during freezing temps did generate some headlines, it was not the “OMG the world is ending” coverage that we’ve come to expect from our alphabet networks. Maybe that’s a good thing?

    In modern times, Outrage and Hysteria = Viewership and Money (unfortunately).

    For a young 20-or 30-something single person, riding out no power/heat for days could be a fun challenge. For families with children, it’s a disaster. That we are led by so many single “professionals” without families or children even more deeply widens the gap between those who govern us and we the governed. They don’t get us and often view us with contempt or disdain; we don’t get them and don’t like their secular worldview that they force down our throats.

    An acquaintance in California said this week: “I heard Governor Abbott is turning people’s power off on purpose.” Sorry, not true. But again, these days the truth does not matter, and most American movers and shakers don’t even think that the truth exists. Our California acquaintance falls prey to the dominant propaganda, to the ubiquitous dynamic that Outrage and Hysteria = Viewership and Money.

    I’d say that I wonder how our wonderful monastic brotherhood at Holy Archangels in Kendalia fared, but I am sure they are OK. They are a hearty bunch. True monastics. Wonderful men. Now if only they’d flee the Patriarchate of Istanbul.

    It’s now warming up here in Texas, and things are melting. We will be OK. Thanks to all for your prayers. Seriously! Come and have some barbecue and chips & queso with a Modelo. And bring more Orthodoxy here! Texans are a wonderful people, many of whom love Our Lord (generally from a protestant mindset) but whose souls are searching for the deeper Truth. If the OCA had any sense, it would sell its Oyster Bay Cove mansion (is it still on the market?) and move its national chancery to Texas. Christian growth is here, not in the mid-Atlantic or New England.

    God bless Texas!

    • Gail Sheppard says

      I’m glad to hear the good folks in TX will be OK. Yes, God bless TX.

    • I’m from TX as well, I love going to Holy Archangels. I wish I could have seen it covered in snow, bet it was beautiful.

      Now if only they’d flee the Patriarchate of Istanbul.

      Agreed. That’s honestly the one thing keeping me from considering living near the monastery. Don’t really want to hitch my wagon to GOARCH, as much as I love the monasteries I just have no desire to go if they do end up staying with them.

  8. Anonymous II says

    Mask Rebellion: Footage out of California shows the moment a group of anti-mask protesters stormed a Trader Joe’s grocery store in defiance of Covid-19 mask rules.

    Once inside the supermarket in Santa Cruz, the large group proceeded to shop for various items, as masked onlookers and employees shouted and assaulted them.

    See: https://www.infowars.com/posts/mask-rebellion-maskless-protesters-mob-trader-joes/

    • George Michalopulos says

      Indeed, may that state be blessed.

      BTW, my son and mother-in-law live in Texas and it was very tough for them and everybody else, but with true Texas grit, they pulled out of it.

      Hopefully, the Texans will rise as one and demand and end to all foolish green energy boondoggles from now on. (I imagine the turbines will continue to exist until they rot out but I don’t see any thing in the future along these lines.)

  9. Thank you, Anton, for speaking something of sanity on this site.

    • George Michalopulos says

      Anton, the reliance on wind turbines was because of Federal mandates. That Texas tried to deregulate their energy sources is not to be condemned, but what results from the insane mandates placed from an external source.

      It’s no different from the old Soviet Union days when the official market mandated agriculture to be regulated by the state. The inevitable shortages resulted in ordinary people resorting to a black or gray market to make ends meet. The communist countries could keep operating as long as the illicit markets filled in the gap. When those markets were no longer able to meet the demand, the centralized economies failed.

      I realize we’re talking about energy here but the principle stands. Texas will not be going back to reliance on wind turbines. And worse (better?) than that, this will cause them to further alienate themselves politically from the Federal government.

      The Feds long ago overstretched their reach. The regulatory chickens are all coming home to roost now.

      P.S. don’t think that the same workarounds haven’t happened in California. Not to the same extent mind you but the fact that California hasn’t suffered as much from power outages is because California has the mildest weather in the US. Texas does not. As we can see, intermittent freezes happen there. I’m not saying that there are no power outages in California –there are, year around–it’s just that the weather is milder and thus nobody freezes to death.

    • Jane Tzilvelis says

      Check out Operation Popeye

  10. Jane Tzilvelis says

    ???

    Weather “Modification”
    NOT
    Climate Change.

  11. robert john klancko p e says

    Having been in the environmental health and safety field for fifty five years,,,global warming is a politicized effort of pseudo science,,,,, yes we humans need to be better stewards and this includes the asians, africans, and south americans,,,,their lack of suitable controls are creating enormous negative impacts,,,it is not us,,,,also increased underwater volcanic activity and increased solar activity, as well as normal cyclic activity are also major factors,,,,this is covered very well in the newsletter the energy advocate by professor howard hayden,,,,,,,we need to reduce the poor science, anecdotal information, and knee jerk reactions,,,,,this data analysis reminds me of the book titled how to lie with statistics,,,,,the rigorous science does not support the errant interpretations

  12. Texas to Add 35 Gigawatts of Wind & Solar in Next 3 Years —
    Boosting Grid Resilience

    https://cleantechnica.com/2021/02/20/texas-to-add-35-gigawatts-of-wind-solar-in-next-3-years-boosting-grid-resilience/amp/

    Einstein’s definition of insanity comes to mind:
    “doing then same thing over and over
    while expecting a different result”.

  13. Of course, the UK is no better than Texas:

    The 2019 UK Weather Dependent Renewables fleet: costs and comparisons
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/02/21/summary-uk-weather-dependent-renewables-2019/

    ‘ These Comparative costs for Renewable Wind and Solar and conventional Power generation are derived from 2020 USA EIA (Energy Information Administration) information. An estimate of longer-term costs is made over a 60-year service-life, (as with Nuclear). These costs are independent of any subsidies or tax benefits enjoyed by Renewables. ‘

    The extra costs are eye-watering

    • Slick Willie says

      Didn’t Big Boris (bb) say that offshore wind farms will power every home in the UK by 2030?

      • Boris Johnson is notorious for the
        “perpetration of terminological inexactitudes”,
        as Winston S Churchill might have expressed it.

        As a cub reporter, he perpetrated one on the front page of The Times;
        for which the Glaswegian editor Charlie Wilson sacked him.

  14. The spectre of the third union with Catholics
    is no longer a spectre

    https://spzh.news/en/zashhita-very/77665-prizrak-tretyjej-unii-s-katolikami-uzhe-ne-prizrak

    ‘ …it can be assumed that as 2025 approaches and the prospects for union with the Vatican become clearer, there will be fewer and fewer people willing to follow Phanar. I wish it could be so. Perhaps we will see the Churches that have recognized the OCU back out of their recognition. Perhaps this will happen after the change of leadership of these Churches. But those who nevertheless decide to follow in the wake of the Patriarchate of Constantinople will, as they say, cross the Rubicon, and thus the division existing today between the Local Churches will grow into a real schism. ‘

    The die is not yet cast.
    Yet…

    • I just can’t imagine the majority of bishops with the Church of Greece and Cyprus, and especially the native African clergy in the Patriarchate of Alexandria going along with the Fanar.

      The coin toss for Constantinople’s diaspora jurisdictions could go either way. The exception to this may be SE Asia, NZ, etc.

      • The policy of the Patriarch appears to be to lead his followers in a paddling-about in the shallow waters of the Rubicon in the dry season; until suddenly, when the waters rise, they find themselves on the other side (the Rome side) of the river from where they thought they were.

  15. “EITHER WE WILL GO TO PRISON OR WE WILL DIE FROM THE COLD OR WE WILL BE CLEANED [OUT] WITH KNIVES” – ARMED GROUPS OF FOREIGNERS CIRCULATE IN THE MOUNTAINS
    https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.makeleio.gr/εξωφυλλο/Η-ΘΑ-ΠΑΜΕ-ΦΥΛΑΚΗ-Ή-ΘΑ-ΠΕΘΑΝΟΥΜΕ-ΑΠΟ-ΤΟ-Κ/

    ‘ …in Lesvos the population is in despair, as armed Muslims are now circulating in groups, with our remote island in danger of becoming the first territory to be “lost” in population.

    The breeder, Fotis Giounis, who in the last few days found the remains of slaughtered animals from his herd in the neighboring streams, complains that armed gangs of illegal immigrants entered his farm a few days ago and slaughtered animals, kids and sheep, from which he lives. . According to the breeder, the foreigners used as a makeshift slaughterhouse, a stump covered with metal sheets in his field, in which pieces of the slaughtered animals were found. In the next stream he found the heads and skins of the animals thrown away. …

    … organizations in the Aegean islands are talking about the creation of a “city” camp of Muslim illegal immigrants, following a memorandum with the European Union, which will strengthen the Islamic zone that is gradually being created from Evros to Rhodes. … ‘

    It’s like the Turkoman invasion of Anatolia after Manzikert.

    • Gail Sheppard says

      Lord have mercy.

      I had a Facebook friend who was a Christian in Egypt. They were so poor they raised pigs because “pigs will eat garbage” if you give it to them. They would then sell the meat to the other Christians. Muslims began harassing them and would open the gates to let the pigs wander free. They would then steal them and slaughter them.

      I wanted to send them some money to help them out but he said the government would take it while in transit and it would never reach them. I asked to go through his priest, but he wasn’t all that optimistic about that either. He just asked for my prayers and soon dropped off the radar.

  16. Russia and Turkey’s disinformation campaign
    against the Ecumenical Patriarchate [?]

    https://www.ekathimerini.com/multimedia/podcasts/1156032/russia-and-turkey-s-disinformation-campaign-against-the-ecumenical-patriarchate/

    This is a 15 minute podcast hosted by Ekathimerini.
    The discussion is about political, but not religious, matters.
    It is delusional…