In Quest for Battery Metals, U.S. Takes On Cobalt’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’

U.S. officials are offering grants to companies willing to support workers in Congo’s dangerous informal mining sector

By Alexandra Wexler and Yusuf Klan

The U.S. is turning to a much-criticized source as it races to secure supplies of battery metals to meet the growing demand for electric vehicles. 

Wyoming last week became the latest state to install AI-powered mass surveillance cameras, which will begin in the town of Jackson.

Cameras using automated license plate recognition (ALPR) technology can scan passing cars and capture license plate numbers, makes and models, colors, and identifying markers such as bumper stickers or broken tail lights. They then use artificial intelligence to break these data down into searchable queries and match them against the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC). If there is a match, a real-time alert is sent to law enforcement.

Jackson, Wyoming

The cameras feed into a centralized mass camera network owned by the manufacturer, Flock Safety, which it calls a “public safety platform”.

On Wednesday, the Jackson Town Council narrowly voted to spend $185,000 to install 30 ALPR Falcon cameras from Flock Safety, though even proponents of the measure felt uneasy.

“I don’t like this particular arc of this particular part of history,” said Councilman Josh Schechter. “I’m screaming ‘stop’ as I vote ‘yes.’”

Councilwoman Sell Chambers, who also voted “yes”, expressed her trepidation.

“I have traditionally been anti-surveillance, I think it has been a slippery slope,” she said. “But I just think that that ship has sailed. We are so under surveillance, like constantly, everywhere.”

Over 2,000 cities across 43 states have already installed Flock Safety’s ALPR cameras, according to the Daily Wire. The devices can also be purchased by private individuals, businesses, schools and homeowners associations (HOAs), who can also create their own “hot lists”. Hundreds of HOAs are reportedly using the cameras.

Flock Safety also sells other devices such as Raven, an audio device built to detect the sounds of gunshots, breaking glass, sawing metal or screeching tires.

Aside from being used to “fight crime” ALPR cameras are being used in other parts of the world to enforce climate mandates.

Wyoming

In the United Kingdom and Europe, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras are placed around Ultra-Low Emission Zones (ULEZ), areas only accessible to low-emission vehicles. Cars that do not meet the city’s environmental standards are charged a daily fee for entering the ULEZ, which in London costs £12.50 ($16.00). Fines are levied against cars which the cameras catch entering without the authorized sticker.

But Londoners are not responding well to the climate mandates, refusing to pay the fines and even vandalizing dozens of cameras.

Two Princeton, MIT Scientists Say EPA Climate Regulations Based on a ‘Hoax’

Physicist, meteorologist testify that the climate agenda is ‘disastrous’ for America

By Kevin Stocklin

August 12, 2023

Kevin Stocklin is a business reporter, film producer and former Wall Street banker. He wrote and produced “We All Fall Down: The American Mortgage Crisis,” a 2008 documentary on the collapse of the mortgage finance system. His most recent documentary is “The Shadow State,” an investigation of the ESG industry.

Two prominent climate scientists have taken on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new rules to cut CO2 emissions in electricity generation, arguing in testimony that the regulations “will be disastrous for the country, for no scientifically justifiable reason.”

Citing extensive data to support their case, William Happer, professor emeritus in physics at Princeton University, and Richard Lindzen, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), argued that the claims used by the EPA to justify the new regulations are not based on scientific facts but rather political opinions and speculative models that have consistently proven to be wrong. 

“The unscientific method of analysis, relying on consensus, peer review, government opinion, models that do not work, cherry-picking data and omitting voluminous contradictory data, is commonly employed in these studies and by the EPA in the Proposed Rule,” Mr. Happer and Mr. Lindzen stated. “None of the studies provides scientific knowledge, and thus none provides any scientific support for the Proposed Rule.”

“All of the models that predict catastrophic global warming fail the key test of the scientific method: they grossly overpredict the warming versus actual data,” they stated. “The scientific method proves there is no risk that fossil fuels and carbon dioxide will cause catastrophic warming and extreme weather.”

Climate models like the ones that the EPA is using have been consistently wrong for decades in predicting actual outcomes, Mr. Happer told The Epoch Times. He presented the table below to the EPA to illustrate his point.

Modeled climate predictions (average shown by red line) versus actual observations (source: J.R. Christy, Univ. of Alabama; KNMI Climate Explorer)

“That was already an embarrassment in the ‘90s, when I was director of energy research in the U.S. Department of Energy,” he said. “I was funding a lot of this work, and I knew very well then that the models were overpredicting the warming by a huge amount.”

PLEASE CLICK ON THE ABOVE LINK TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AS IT HAS NUMEROUS CHARTS AND GRAPHS TO BACK UP THEIR DATA

 

 

 

10 ways American culture and way of life is under assault

The Worst President in the Last 100 Years” – Victor Davis Hanson

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J6WjzdPBCo