Climate Denier Response of the Day
Heartland Institute stated: “It turns out the green scolds’ war on plastic straws really sucked. A new study from South Korea’s Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment found that plastic straws have a smaller environmental footprint than plastic straws.”
Yes, it’s true it makes no sense; however, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
I replied:
AGH cost the US economy $2.1 trillion in 2025 and even more in 2026. That’s the best you’ve got? Surely, you’re grasping at straws.
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Their full comment:
It turns out the green scolds’ war on plastic straws really sucked. A new study from South Korea’s Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment found that plastic straws have a smaller environmental footprint than plastic straws, and paper straws produce more than six times the carcinogens. Oops!
On Episode #223 of The Climate Realism Show, we will cover that bit of Crazy Climate News of the Week, and more. Just in time for Halloween a scary new map by something called The Climate Impact Lab claims more than 373,000 additional people will die between now and March because of this year’s Super El Niño.
We will also talk about the climate and energy angle to the cult-like opposition to the building of AI data centers. And we will preview next month’s COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye where some 100,000 politicians, bureaucrats and activists will work out how to pry trillions more out of the few wealthy nations still willing to pay to the United Nations’ host of grifters.
My full response:
AGH cost the US economy $2.1 trillion in 2025 and even more in 2026. That’s the best you’ve got? Surely, you’re grasping at straws.
And let’s address that headline about paper straws producing six times the carcinogens. That’s a rather impressive example of turning a scientific measurement into political misinformation.
The South Korean study reported a 6.33-times-higher modeled human carcinogenic impact indicator for paper straws compared with conventional polypropylene straws. It did NOT find that paper straws cause six times more cancer, that consumers face six times the cancer risk, or that drinking through paper straws is a significant cancer hazard. Those are entirely different scientific claims.
The distinction between modeled life-cycle impacts and actual human exposure is apparently too inconvenient for your headline writers.
Even more embarrassing? The researchers recommended reducing disposable straw consumption altogether and providing straws upon request. Their conclusion wasn’t that plastic is harmless or that paper is dangerous. It was that replacing one disposable product with another doesn’t automatically solve an environmental problem.
Now, let’s put this extraordinary straw discovery into perspective.
The Climate Impact Lab’s mortality projections are apparently terrifying propaganda, but decades of climate science, observed warming, accumulating ocean heat, accelerating ice loss, extreme weather and mounting economic damages are somehow a conspiracy. Convenient!
And let’s talk about AI data centers. Apparently, people concerned about their enormous electricity and water demands are a cult, while an organization that routinely attacks climate science is offering an objective assessment of the energy transition. That’s some impressive intellectual gymnastics.
As for COP31, dismissing international climate cooperation as a gathering of grifters is considerably easier than explaining how nations are supposed to address a global atmospheric problem without international cooperation. Carbon dioxide doesn’t recognize national borders, political affiliations or ideological talking points.
Here’s the real Halloween horror story: AGH is imposing trillions of dollars in economic damage, and your response is to celebrate a study about drinking straws while misrepresenting its cancer findings.
You aren’t debunking climate science. You’re distracting people from it.
Perhaps the next episode should investigate the environmental footprint of the straw man arguments being manufactured by the Heartland Institute. At least those appear to be in unlimited supply.