I think that Joe Biden is shaping up to be one of the worst presidents in American history. He has clearly invited the population of Central America to come to the United States and he will make them all citizens eventually. He wants to be a president who rescues refugees, and he seems to regard anyone from another country as a refugee. Refugee from what is another question. There are no wars and no particular tyranny is Central America. They are just poorer, and would like to make more money and take advantage of Americas free public schooling and health care, and the opportunity for better jobs.
He obviously has no interest in full employment and is willing to eliminate jobs in the interest of climate change, and attack whole industries as well. And no, we cannot just dump petroleum and run our cars on electricity. Most of our power plants run on fossil fuels. The Japanese had an edict to switch entirely to electric run cars in the fairly near future, and discovered to their dismay that they did not have enough electricity to run the nation’s automobiles.
Biden clearly believes in an upcoming climate change disaster, without any effort to investigate the actual science. Climate activists are quite sure that CO2 is shortly going to destroy the world without any understanding whatsoever that Carbon dioxide is a natural fertilizer for plants and is greening the earth, and creating bountiful crops that are feeding the hungry all over the world.
Where we got so far off, I think, is when some scientists started worrying because the CO2 in the atmosphere increased slightly, and the government began giving out grants to climate scientists to explain what was happening. Well!. Government grants meant new lab equipment, perhaps even an assistant, prestige, and climate scientists ran for their computers. They put in what they knew about the climate for sure, and then they put in their best guesses about what was up, and some intelligent estimates for what they didn’t know, and filled in the gaps with some plain old guesswork, because there really was a whole lot about the climate that they didn’t know at all. And clearly the government needed information to work on. And of course some of the climate scientists got a little more ambitious than others, more prestige for a neglected branch of science was enticing.
It has been much warmer in the past, and much colder too. We know about ice ages and can see the evidence from the distant past, but we didn’t start keeping records of temperatures until well into the 1800s, The first thermometer was invented in 1714, by appropriately, Daniel Fahrenheit, Now temperatures are measured all over the world, as this map from Dr. Roy Spencer shows: Interesting to see where they care and where they do not.
Dr. Roy Spencer is at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, and runs the satellites that measure temperatures all over the world for NASA. Fascinating to see where there is serious attention and where there is not.
Do visit Dr. Spencer’s website for serious information on climate, and also Climate Depot and Watts Up With That, all listed in the sidebar. Each of them lists other websites from other serious scientists, so it’s not hard to find information, just hard to make the effort, I guess.
ADDENDUM: I should have explained this map, The yellow dots represent officially reporting temperature stations.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: First Press Conference, Good Government?, Not Up To the Job
Did you watch President Biden’s long-avoided press conference? I found it, frankly, frightening. He is clearly not up to the job. And that is how the comments from the media went, ranging from comments about the many lies he offered, to the impossibility of his aims. His aims seem mostly to be about undoing anything and everything done by Donald Trump. without the slightest understanding that many of the things Trump did were just what the economy needed. President Trump had a border under control, and well on the way to being very much improved, and now it’s wide open with Biden inviting all of Central America to come on in. And they all seem to be coming.
Biden is planning to take “aggressive action” to ensure that the United States achieves a “carbon pollution free power sector” by 2035 and a “net zero economy” in just 15 years later. Unfortunately renewable energy is way too inefficient to be of any real use, and utterly dependent on subsidies from governments already drowning in debt. A “net-zero” economy isn’t going to happen. There is no climate crisis. CO2 is not an upcoming climate disaster, but simply a natural fertilizer for plants that is feeding the world better with bountiful crops.
Joe Manchin, Senator from West Virginia, stands in the way of Biden’s desire to get rid of the filibuster, so President Biden has offered Manchin’s wife an important and well-paying job in the administration, spelled b-r-i-b-e.
So far, Biden’s actions from the XL Pipeline executive order that destroyed something like 11 thousand high-paying jobs and his other actions have jacked up the price of gas, so it’s costing all of you more to drive, and undoubtedly there will be more price increases in the cost of gasoline. Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s Transportation Secretary, wants to tax you on your mileage to fund Infrastructure spending. I haven’t heard that bridges are falling down and freeways crumbling, but I have noticed that we always seem to have a need to spend large amounts of money on “infrastructure.” I have no confidence in Buttigieg either. Biden claimed that Trump left Migrant children to “starve to death” in Mexico, which is also nonsense. Why does he say silly things like this?
The Democrat Mayor of Oakland, California, Libby Schaaf, has announced a program that offers poor minority families $500 a month. Unless you are white. Poor white folks are out of luck, but illegal aliens will qualify. Can you explain that one?
Many of our visitors are interested in the old post about abandoned wind turbines. Wind turbines are a major problem. First of all, the turbines only turn when the wind is blowing, preferably about 35mph, if I remember correctly. You have surely been outside, how often have you experienced that? Doesn’t happen. even in the windiest places, which is where they attempt to place turbines. Which is largely why wind does not produce enough energy to fulfill the needs of a modern industrial society. Machines that run on electricity need steady dependable electricity, including your household. If a turbine breaks down, it costs about $35,000 to dismantle one.. The turbines are not recyclable, and must be buried in a landfill.
Everybody probably imagines the old Dutch windmills that provide us with a history and vision, but those windmills were not there to provide energy, but to grind grain. It’s lovely to think of the natural wind and the sun as providing all the energy we need, but it just isn’t so. CO2 is not a poison, but a natural fertilizer for plants, and crops are growing more bountiful all over the world, feeding hungry people. Add Climate Depot (climate depot.com ) to your regular list of essential websites and visit daily. Marc Morano, the proprietor, has a new book just out that you might consider, called Green Fraud. with a picture of AOC on the cover, and a foreword by Mark Steyn.
The Japanese are warning us, from their own experience. They had an edict to switch entirely to electricity for the nation’s vehicles, and discovered that to be completely impossible. They simply do not have enough electricity to power their nation’s vehicles. Can’t do it.
People get all excited about an idea without checking the facts and the science. You wouldn’t do that if it was your bank account, why let the government do it? It is still your bank account that they hope to charge for their dreamy ideas.
ADDENDUM: The image is not a random mountain and lake shot, but the country where I grew up. That is the Seven Devils Mountains, and the prominent peak is, I believe, the She Devil. There are really seven of them. Pretty country.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Biden Welcome, Cost of Wall, On Terrorist List, Refugees?
There is a crisis at the southern border. Border Patrol agents are overwhelmed, and there is a huge influx of illegals because they believe that President Biden has opened the borders for them. The facilities are overwhelmed, and the people who live along the border are overwhelmed. Ranchers have people crossing their lands. Border towns are overwhelmed and the governors of Border states are trying desperately to cope.
There is, of course much talk about the children at the border, particularly the “children in cages bit”. Unaccompanied children cannot be turned lose on their own. But the “unaccompanied children” are mostly not little children, but teenagers looking for work. In some cases, the father is already in the U.S. and has paid a coyote to get his children to the border. The Border Patrol verifies the relative that the young people are supposed to be going to, before a child can be released.
DHS has also acknowledged that suspected Islamic terrorists are crossing the southern border. The Press tries to contact Border Patrol agents to get straightforward information, DHS tries to keep that from happening. There are numbers of illegals from Syria and other terrorist havens, confirmed.
Joe Biden, we are told, believes that those coming to the border are “refugees” and the United States being a nice country, never turns away refugees. Just what they are supposed to be refugees from is not clear. There are no wars nor civil strife in Central America that we know of. They seem to believe that a higher paying job, free health care, free school for their kids makes the effort worthwhile and they believe that Biden has invited them to come. There is some confusion about whether or not illegals will each get a “Stimulus check”. If you think this is not going to hit your pocketbook, you are mistaken.
DHS has acknowledged that suspected Islamic terrorists are crossing the southern border, some on the terrorist watch list, and have been doing so for some time. That is of some concern to Americans who remember 9/11 all too well.
Because there is a crisis, the press is very much focused on the border and anxious to talk to individual border patrol officers to get straight information. DHS is very determined to prevent that from happening. Biden has reportedly issued a gag order for the Border Patrol.
Mayorkas’ comments that migrant suspects on U.S. terrorism watch lists cross the border came amid the latest round of controversy about the terrorist infiltration claim, which began when a delegation of 13 Republican lawmakers, returning from the border, relayed that Border Patrol agents told them that three Yemeni migrants and a Serb on the U.S. terrorism watch list had been apprehended since October. Major media such as ABC News and the Washington Post quickly published stories, largely featuring Democratic lawmakers and self-described border security experts lashing out at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other delegation members as lying and re-disseminating a disproven conspiracy theory.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week asserted that suspected Islamic terrorists can and have crossed the porous southern border for years, a claim that major media organizations and lawmakers widely pilloried as a fear-mongering falsehood when President Donald Trump and his administration made the same claim in 2019.
“Weird as the Chairman of the subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations and a border state member of Congress haven’t heard anything about this,” tweeted Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who represents the Phoenix area. “Gonna ask for a briefing. Pretty sure he is either wrong or lying.”
Secretary Mayorkas went on to say that he was “much more concerned about domestic terrorism than about the border”. I am concerned about President Biden’s appointments, especially this one. Mayorkas also testified before Congress, and refused to admit that there was any “crisis” at the Southern Border.
Mayorkas said “We will not abandon our values and our principles. We will not abandon the needs of young children. …We are executing our plan. It does take time. It is difficult. Our plan includes the deployment of the Federal Emergency Management Administration, FEMA to assist HHS in building its capacity more rapidly to shelter the children. But it is taking time, and it is difficult because the entire system was dismantled by the prior administration. There was a system in place in the Republican and Democratic administrations that was torn down during the Trump administration. That is why the challenge is more acute than it has ever been.
The problem, of course is Donald Trump, who successfully managed an agreement with Mexico for would be illegals to wait in Mexico for their hearings, started successfully building a successful wall, which Joe Biden is desperately trying to destroy, Joe Biden has determined that not another bit of the border wall will be built. The usual spite. But not completing approved contracts has big costs too,currently around six million each day, specifically for not building the wall.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: "Refugees"?, 100 Thousand 1st Month, child sex-trafficking
In the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Holman Jenkins Jr. wrote about the “Immigration Unpresident.” He said if Biden would hold a press conference he could explain why there is a border crisis. He added “President Biden is not throwing away Donald Trump’s immigration policy. He’s throwing away the border policy of every president since Bill Clinton. When the early 1990s dawned so did the realization behind what became known as “prevention through deterrence”– the U.S. may not be able to control its border but it can influence the incentives of those who seek to cross.
It’s quite clear that President Biden is a victim of the seething hatred for Donald Trump that most of his political party is. He has been furiously busy trying to eliminate everything done by President Trump since the day he was inaugurated. In the cases where he cannot eliminate, like Trump’s “Warp Speed” development of vaccines, he’s claiming he did it himself.
With the Border, Mr. Trump came along with the naive old-fashioned idea that first you control the border, then you decide who gets in. The media is not covering up the growing crisis at the border. As President Biden has cancelled Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico” policy the number of people trying to cross the U.S. Mexico border has surged.
We are not a “nation of immigrants” unless you want to go way back. Even the Native Americans were immigrants from the Pacific Islands. My latest were a young couple from Wales in 1820. Congress has decided that we can allow one million new immigrants a year. The rules are that you apply at your closest consulate or embassy and wait your turn. I don’t know what the rules are for guest workers. There are special rules for agricultural workers, and the Tech industry seems to be importing scads of workers from India, who come cheaper, I guess, than our own stem graduates. I am not anti-immigrant. I’m anti illegal immigrant.
What seems to be different is President Biden’s mindset. He regards the illegals breaching the border as “refugees” — from what exactly other than not being able to earn as much money at home is unknown. But he regards the United States as a country that has always helped “refugees,” so that’s what he’s going to do. He is proposing amnesty for the over 11 million illegal aliens in this country already, and a pathway to citizenship. They are not to be called “illegal” but as “noncitizens” which is defined as “any person not a citizen or national of the United States.” He is allowing some migrants seeking asylum to enter and remain in the U.S. pending adjudication of their asylum applications. Most of the illegal minors are teenagers looking for work, not little kids.
Jen Psaki explained at her press briefing Feb. 24th that the Biden administration’s policy was “not to expel” unaccompanied children who arrive at the border. Democratic Socialist AOC wants to get rid of ICE, ban for profit detention (?) and create “climate refugee ” status. Large mouth, vast ignorance.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Earn More Money, Fleeing War?, Oppression?, Traffic Drugs?
In Joe Biden’s haste to eliminate what he considered as an “environmental danger”, which it wasn’t, one of his first Executive Orders was to halt the XL Pipeline, which transported Canadian oil to the Gulf of Mexico for shipping to countries who have purchased the oil. The oil will now be transported by train which is more susceptible to wrecks and de-railing. He also managed to eliminate around 60,000 high paying American jobs, and ended another 5,000 when he ended all construction on the hated Trump’s border wall. The open places where the wall was not completed, remain wide open. Anyone can just walk through.
The Biden regime has flooded the District of Columbia with armed troops, but opened up the border to everyone else. The Southern border with Mexico is controlled by Mexican Drug Cartels.
The CBPA (Customs and Border Protection Agency) confirmed to Congress today that four people arrested at the southern border since Oct 1, match names on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database. Three of the people arrested were from Yemen and one was from Serbia.
In fiscal 2018, six people from Yemen and Bangladesh were arrested. Today, Yemen is the leading terror hot zone with Iran’s Houthis, whom the Biden administration has chosen to back, along with elements of Al Qaeda and other Sunni Jihadis. So it’s not just a matter of illegal aliens infiltrating the border, but also just who they are. They are not all innocent migrants from Central America, looking for higher-paying jobs, as Joe Biden prefers to think. We really don’t need another 9/11 just now.
The children (usually described as being in cages) are more apt to be teenagers, looking for work. The Biden claim to be taking care of them better is simply nonsense. Many of the children are being trafficked, and do not have any family relationship with the people who are using them to get across the border. The children at the border were always well treated, taken to parks and playgrounds to relieve the monotony of waiting to be connected with a verifiable family member. It is useful for Democrats to try to turn hard working border patrol agents into some kind of monsters, but they are ordinary family men too, doing a difficult job, which has been made much more difficult under the present restrictions.
Countries have borders and regulations to protect their own citizens and their system of government. Open borders people like to parade around with signs saying “No human being is illegal.” We welcome new citizens, but they need to apply and take their turn. Wanting to become a citizen is different than wanting to work briefly to earn a little more than they can earn at home. Trafficking drugs involves a lot more money, which is another reason why the border is a difficult place. Joe Biden’s wanting to welcome all sorts of illegal aliens may seem like a good thing, but is causing a nightmare for people who live along the border. Peaceful ranching is something quite different when big groups of illegals are tromping across your land. Coyotes often just dump the illegals they are transporting if they get too difficult or ill. The Rio Grande is shallow and fairly easily waded in some places, or there are boats where needed. The Border Patrol is doing a hard and necessary job. and need a little appreciation.
To repeat: The Biden regime has flooded the District of Columbia, the nation’s capitol, with armed troops, but opened up the border to everyone else. How does that even begin to make sense?
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Belief Systems, Morally Acceptable, Politically Acceptable
Each of us carries around with us an outline in our heads of what is acceptable and what is not. Some of it comes from what we learned at home from our parents, and from our days at school, then from our workplaces and our friends. How to behave. What’s O.K. and what is not. Different for everybody, depending on our character and the character of those who taught us. Unless, of course, you are a politician. In that case, you have to add on a vast array of what is politically acceptable, which may be something quite different, because it adds on the attitudes of reporters from all over the political spectrum trying desperately to pull out of you something scandalous with which to place their byline on the front page.
Each of us also has a belief system, which may or may not be true. We may have authorities to back up what we think, but the authorities may or may not be correct. For example, many people believe that there is a “climate crisis”, notably including the autistic child from Sweden, who came to America particularly to scold the United Nations that they weren’t paying enough attention and they had to do something right now, or it was all over. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives (D) just announced that it was Climate Change that was causing the “humanitarian challenge” at our southern border. (Not Joe Biden at all) And besides, Joe Biden is busily dismantling everything President Trump did as well, just in case. It is not climate change that is the problem, but regime change.
Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace just wrote: “Clearly, the social cost of carbon is negative on its many fronts. Perhaps we should get paid for emitting it. It is responsible for up to 70% of increased food crop production (I guess they didn’t factor that in). It is greening the land and presumably the oceans. It is perhaps involved in slightly increasing global temperature above the frigid Pleistocene Epoch the Earth has been locked in for 2.6 million years, although there is no proof of this. It makes all plants more efficient in their use of water. It makes greenhouse production of food 30-60% higher than at ambient levels.” So there you go with belief systems, and outlines.
For the media, a PhD is very helpful, because you can trust anyone with a PhD, can’t you? The Tech industry has added on all sorts of “fact checkers” who may or may not know anything more than you do, and we have no verification of their particular wisdom in being assigned as “fact checkers.”Large numbers of them don’t seem to know what they are checking about, but are simply toeing the party line. The media, trying to be helpful is adding “reading time” to their pieces, so you will know just how long it will take you to add that morsel of knowledge to your belief system.
President Joe Biden also believes in Climate change, That’s why he eliminated some 11,000 jobs with the disposal of the XL Pipeline for no other reason whatsoever. The oil will be transported to the Gulf to be shipped, it will just have to travel by way of train, which is much riskier for accidents. He apparently believes that the flood of illegal aliens are escaping from something or other and he is helping them somehow, by eliminating the border controls put in by President Trump, but other than another attack on American jobs, it’s unclear just how he believes he is helping anybody. If you are allowing illegal aliens to flood across the border which is controlled by the drug cartels, you must believe that you are helping someone in some way, but the Border Patrol and ICE don’t really understand what he is doing, nor why. Nor do the rest of us.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Operation Warp Speed, Renamed., Useless Vaccine Sites
Less than a week before the inauguration it was announced that the incoming Biden administration would rename Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration initiative that resulted in two COVID vaccines authorized by the FDA before Trump left office, and a third vaccine a couple of months later. Trump’s initiative delivered an FDA-authorized vaccine five times faster than the fastest prior vaccine development in history.
President Biden did announce that he was establishing vaccine sites across the country. There just would not be any vaccine available there. We are certified as being properly eligible for the vaccine, certificates and everything, just cannot find anywhere where we can actually get the vaccine. It’s a strange world out there.
Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York State, is suddenly under fire. The fact that he saw that Covid-19 stricken elderly ladies were quickly put into nursing homes, where they infected the patients already there and hugely increased the death toll, resulted in massive silence from the press. But it seems that he has made improper advancements or even a bit of uncalled for touching to some of his former female aides, and outrage erupts. The congresspeople from New York State, his own compatriots, have even suggested that he should promptly resign. Apparently in today’s world, improper advances to female aides significantly outrank dead old ladies. There seem to be some odd hierarchies out there.
In conjunction with the rebranding of the initiative, a concerted effort by incoming Biden administration officials began to trash the vaccine distribution plan left by the Trump administration. Some, including Kamala Harris, have claimed that there hadn’t been a plan at all—a claim debunked by former Operation Warp Speed officials. Whenever Biden is speaking, did you notice that Kamala Harris is hovering in the background, all dressed in black? There is something remarkably odd about this transition.
Last night in his first primetime address since taking office, Biden again tried to take credit for the COVID-19 vaccine’s development and distribution. I have no idea why he is trying to do this. I guess they know that many people pay little attention to the news and will believe anything reported often enough.
What the people want is to be able to get the vaccine, both shots. (except, of course for those who are afraid of the shots.) and stop being locked down. Get back to normal life. I’m not sure anyone cares about who gets the credit, except. of course Joe Biden.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: "Covid relief", Progressive Wish List, Union Bailout
President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” was signed into law this week. They kept calling it “The Covid Relief Bill”, but it’s not about reducing the spread of the pandemic at all. It’s just a wish list of progressive policies. Less than 10 percent of the spending in the bill has anything to do with public health, reducing the spread of the disease or anything like that. $90 billion goes to a taxpayer-funded bailout of union pension plans that were underfunded long before the disease was ever thought of. The union bailout gets about twice as much funding as COVID-19 testing or contact tracing.
There is $126 billion for K-12 schools around the country. Last I heard the schools didn’t need funding, they needed to open up. But only five percent is supposed to be spent by October anyway. There’s a third round of “stimulus” checks for people who have been able to continue working are who are earning up to 2 1/2 times the median household income is not what one usually calls “targeted aid.”
In the meantime, the flow of illegals across the border keeps increasing. The “kids in cages” seem not to be small children, as they are usually portrayed, but teenagers looking for jobs.President Biden keeps suggesting that they are “refugees” and he is saving them from something or other, but that seems not to be the case either. A lot of them arrive in tee shirts saying “President Biden please let us in”. It would be interesting to find out who is paying for those tee shirts.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Adopted For Appearancdes?, Champ and Major, Longtime Family Pets?
Strange times. When the Bidens were campaigning for the presidency, they decided that they needed to have dogs in the White House. People liked White House pets. So they adopted a couple of shelter dogs. I had assumed, as probably most people did that they were just bringing their pets along from home. Nope. Planned addition to the White House to become more popular.
You remember when Joe Biden broke his foot pulling his dog’s tail when he got out of the shower, or something like that. A lot of people were clucking their tongues about pulling the dog’s tail. Who would pull their dog’s tail anyway? I’ve had dogs all my life, My first was half St. Bernard and half Great Pyrenees who grew up with me and accompanied me everywhere, keeping me out of trouble. Never pulled a dog’s tail nor even thought of doing so.
Dogs were named Major and Champ. Major just took a nip out of a security man, and has been banished to the Biden home in Delaware. Big news of the day, today. Way too much is not real, and done for show. Odd. But I guess that is politics today. Genuine is not useful. But we probably need to know what is real and what is not. It could possibly effect our vote.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Gender Imbalance, One Child Policy, Relationship Education
Back around 1980, The Chinese became concerned with the possibility of overpopulation, and instituted a policy for Han Chinese nationally of one child for a couple, enforced by forced abortion and infanticide.
Like all big government control efforts, China has ended up with an enormous gender imbalance, with 34 million more men than women, and a severe shortage of women of childbearing age. Fortunately, America is not inclined towards big controlling edicts, but Nancy Pelosi and Chuckie Schumer should take notice. They are leaning a little too much towards control, as is Joe Biden.
Dictator Xi Jinping replaced the one-child policy with a “two-child” policy in 2016, but polls show that Chinese youth have little interest in parenting and increasingly, less desire to get into romantic relationships at all. The Chinese government estimated that 10 million people were born in 2020, 15 percent fewer births than in 2019. It has been decided that Chinese students lack emotion education. CPPCC member Yu Xinwei proposed that universities should take responsibility in pressuring young Chinese people to marry and have children. Simply allowing a couple to have a second child does not mean that they will actually have one. The costs of raising a child are up, housing prices are up and there are mounting career pressures on women.
The solution, of course, is college classes in relationships. Back in 2013, there were exclusive classes in how to identify suitable bachelors. One agency that claimed it could help single women to find Mr. Right, offered a one day course for 2,800 yen (US $451) and the agency at that time had 30,000 students. The Covid crisis arrived, and couples were shut in and that didn’t go all that well. The divorce rate is up significantly.
Will college classes in relationships have the desired effect? Most Americans who went to college would, reflecting on their own four years, laugh hysterically. The Chinese have got themselves into a strange dilemma. How to teach a generation uninterested in relationships how to have relations with the opposite sex, and consider marriage and family as a desirable outcome? Strange times, strange times.
The Biden administration is reverting to Obama’s 2016 guidance until its new working group fully updates its work next year. Researchers, industries and environmentalists have begun to line up to advise the White House just how they think this number should be calculated. Biden’s chief climate advisor is Gina McCarthy, left over from the Obama administration and famous for killing two rivers. or at least the life in two rivers, one of them in Alaska, the other the mighty Colorado.
Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore: “Clearly, the social cost of carbon is negative on its many fronts. Perhaps we should get paid for emitting it. It is responsible for up to 70% of increased food crop production (I guess they didn’t factor that in). It is greening the land and presumably the oceans. It is perhaps involved in slightly increasing global temperature above the frigid Pleistocene Epoch the Earth has been locked in for 2.6 million years, although there is no proof of this. It makes all plants more efficient in their use of water. It makes greenhouse production of food 30-60% higher than at ambient levels.”
Bloomberg Law: President Joe Biden has reactivated the Obama-era approach to estimating the cost of climate change, a move that will revamp environmental regulations by establishing a much higher dollar value for greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
A document published by the White House in the Federal Register on Friday re-installs the Obama administration’s interim values for the “social cost of carbon,” a figure that has been used to shape dozens of energy-related regulations. The Trump administration disbanded the interagency group responsible for the work and reduced the estimate to a small fraction of conventional values.
The social cost of greenhouse gases is an estimate of how much money the U.S. stands to benefit from avoiding each additional metric ton of emitted carbon dioxide, methane, or nitrous oxide, which are the three most important planet-warming gases. This measure is used in federal benefit-cost analyses to account for damage caused by fossil fuel, capturing impacts from pollution that aren’t reflected in the market prices for gas, oil, and coal. And of course, what the Biden administration used to eliminate the XL Pipeline and millions of jobs, unnecessarily.
Typically, an obscure economic measure of climate change, the social cost of carbon occasionally escapes academic journals to play a central role in federal climate policy. A federal court ruled in 2007 that the White House had to consider the costs of climate change in rulemaking, and President Obama convened an interagency working group to identify a measure grounded in data and the mechanics of strict federal guidelines.
The models underpinning the social cost of carbon have become something of a punching bag in economic circles, in part because of the particular sensitivity of their results to assumptions over how fast money loses value over time. Economists call this the discount rate.
What happened, I think, way back when we started looking at climate, and the first outrageous claims about climate catastrophe came out, was that the federal government, slightly alarmed, started offering grants and emoluments to university scientists interested in climate for authentic information. Well, grants meant new equipment, honors, prestige. There was a massive clicking on of the computers in the science departments. They put in what they knew for sure about the climate. They added their best information from their fellows in the specialty, and put in their best guesses, and hoped it all would result in major grants. It was the part they didn’t really know anything about and their best guesses that has caused all the trouble.
Christiana Figueres, the General Secretary of the IPCC, at a press conference back in 2015, admitted that the object of the whole climate change thing, was to rid the world of Capitalism. Information is not always straightforward, nor even truthful; and from it’s panicky origins, climate has always been a weapon, not a fact.
Here are two valuable videos you can order from Climate Depot, Climate Hustle One and Climate Hustle Two, to stream once or as a DVD to keep. Inexpensive and worth your time, Good for your kids too.
American Elephants 