Filed under: Capitalism, Developing Nations, Economy, Education, Europe, European Union, Immigration, Intelligence, Law, Politics, The United States, United Kingdom | Tags: And What About Us?, The Death of Europe, The Reason Why
This is one of Peter Robinson’s Uncommon Knowledge videos from the Hoover Institution, a particularly fascinating and essential one: a conversation with Douglas Murray about his book The Death of Europe and his coming new book The Madness of Crowds. This is deep insight into the state of the world today, and why it is so.
Understanding Britain and America and the oncoming problems, and why people are the way they are. Absolutely brilliant. It’s very long, and worth every minute. No time now, come back and watch it later, or make your own copy from You Tube. You will be rewarded and your understanding deepened.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Developing Nations, Economics, Economy, Environment, France, Global Warming, Junk Science, Media Bias, Regulation, Science/Technology | Tags: Are We in a Cooling Period, Is Climate Constantly Readjusting?, Is There a Preferred Average State?
1695 Winter Landscape: Snowfall near Antwerp by Lucas van Valckanborch
An interesting article by Dr. Roy Spencer reposted at Watts Up With That? Dr. Spencer is wondering if there is a preferred average state for the climate, and the variations gather around the average. That idea seems to guide the IPCC scientists who write the reports which guide international energy policy on fossil fuel use. They construct their climate models so that the models do not produce any warming or cooling unless they are forced to through increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases, aerosols or volcanic eruptions.
What I’d like to discuss here is NOT whether there are other ‘external’ forcing agents of climate change, such as the sun. That is a valuable discussion, but not what I’m going to address. I’d like to address the question of whether there really is an average state that the climate system is constantly re-adjusting itself toward, even if it is constantly nudged in different directions by the sun.
If there is such a preferred average state, then the forcing-feedback paradigm of climate change is valid. In that system of thought, any departure of the global average temperature from the Nature-preferred state is resisted by radiative “feedback”, that is, changes in the radiative energy balance of the Earth in response to the too-warm or too-cool conditions. Those radiative changes would constantly be pushing the system back to its preferred temperature state.
If you have an interest in things climate, it’s an interesting read. Also, keep in mind that President Trump just got us out of the Paris Peace Accords, which would have done nothing at all to remedy anything about the climate, but would have shipped a lot of American funds off to the world’s poorer states.
Dr. Spencer adds:
It is clear that the UN IPCC, by its very charter, is primarily focused on human-caused climate change. As a result of political influence (related to the desire of governmental regulation over the private sector) it will never seriously address the possibility that long-term climate change might be part of nature. Only those scientists who are supportive of this anthropocentric climate view are allowed to play in the IPCC sandbox.
It’s an interesting read, and exposes some of the uncertainties under which our climate scientists operate. The comments following are interesting as well, as the Watts Up With That? readers are interested and have their own opinions.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Developing Nations, Domestic Policy, Election 2020, Freedom, Global Warming, Junk Science, Media Bias, News, Politics, Progressivism, Science/Technology, The United States | Tags: Climate Change Is Not the Threat, Psuedoscientific Twaddle, The Partisan Media
Another must-read post from David Harsanyi at the Federalist. It is properly called Climate Hysteria. The Earth has not warmed at all in the last five years. It has been much warmer in the past, and much colder as well. There was a time when wine grapes were being grown in England, and wheat in Norway. And as well, a time when they were skating on the Thames. Democrats come up with doomsday scenarios to illustrate the terrible damage Trump is doing to the climate by failing to endorse the Paris Climate Accords which are designed to send the wealth of the more prosperous nations to the less fortunate countries, and end capitalism if possible.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Developing Nations, Economics, Energy, Freedom, History, Socialism, The United States | Tags: Growth of the Middle Class, Not Just Money, Transformative
In America, we usually don’t talk much about the Middle Class — we just assume that most everyone is in it. Except for a surprising number of billionaires, there isn’t much difference between being middle class or being wealthy, and most people simply described themselves as being middle class without giving it much thought. Historically, 85 to 90 percent of Americans have self-identified as middle class. Sixty percent is more usual today.
Gallup surveys show that only about 2 percent of Americans self-identify as “Upper” class. And we have lots of articles about the “shrinking U.S. middle class”, from the media or politicians. They usually forget to mention that the middle class in America is shrinking because more people are getting wealthier. (Economics is not a strong point for the Left)
But reaching the middle class is not just a class designation. Nor is it a matter of money. A family of five in Burundi, living on $324 a year would qualify, according to Gapminder foundation, as would a family of five in China who were clearing $121,000 annually.
As a life experience, reaching the middle class is transformative. The quality of life between poverty and middle-class is stark.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund, the founder of Gapminder’s Dollar Street project, said perhaps the most telling sign of people reaching the middle class is the presence of store-purchased hygienic items.
“The most striking thing is so many of the people we visited so far actually have a plastic toothbrush,” Rönnlund told the Post. “It’s the same with soap. Almost everyone in the world has access to some kind of soap. The poorest buy a tiny fraction of a soap bar or make it themselves. When you come to the middle, you see people buying locally produced, big bars of soap.”
From a global pespective, living in the middle class means having some luxury items most Americans think are basic essentials. Things like access to transportation, air conditioning, electricity in their homes and running water.
What hasn’t been much noticed is that worldwide, poverty is declining and more people are joining the middle class. We have better data on global poverty from the World Bank. Global extreme poverty has declined from 44% to less than 10%. This is a very big deal indeed.
The decline in world poverty has occurred during the Pax Americana, a period notable for the relative peace that began with the Marshall Plan to rebuild a destroyed Europe, the defeat of socialism and a huge expansion of freedom and trade and connectivity.
And then there was our great Norman Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” in agriculture in third-world countries, who saved a billion people from starvation. He remains better known in India, Pakistan, Mexico and China than he is here. With his pioneering techniques, grain production jumped from 692 million tons in 1950 to 1.9 billion tons in 1992.
A slight rise in atmospheric CO² (a natural fertilizer for plants) has meant better plant growth all over the world, and fewer people going hungry. The ability to genetically modify food crops to use less water, or to resist noxious pests, or in the case of “golden rice” to add a gene for the production of carotene. In many ares of Asia, vitamin A is devastatingly rare in the diet of children causing blindness and altered immunity. Rice is the dietary staple, adding it to rice can save children’s lives and vision. The tinfoil-hat crowd does not understand that genetically modifying a food crop to resist drought, or in this case to produce carotene, is perfectly safe. They could more profitably turn their attention to the folks that are trying to bring back the woolly mammoth (in Russia) or bring back some kinds of dinosaur. That might be something to worry about.
For most Americans, becoming a member of the Middle Class is sort of expected, at least when the economy is performing as it is supposed to. For many people all over the world, it is only a vague idea to be dreamed of, yet day by day it is becoming reality for more and more of the world’s people.
Filed under: Developing Nations, Energy, Environment, News, Science/Technology | Tags: Ash Clouds, Dramatic Pictures, Guatamela's Fuego Volcano
The Fuego volcano in Guatemala has erupted today, many deaths much destruction. Here’s a link to the Twitter coverage. At least 25 people have been killed. This is apparently the second eruption this year. The mountain is close to the capitol city.
Very scary.
Addendum: The death toll in Guatemala has risen to over 125 and there are still missing people. They are finding bodies under the volcanic ash, most not yet identified. Here is today’s coverage so far:
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Crime, Developing Nations, Economy, Education, Europe, Immigration, Intelligence, Law, Politics | Tags: Dangerous Illusions, Globalism and Reality, Immigration
This one is a must watch video. Prager University is doing a wonderful job with their very short videos to teach short classes, and make us think. There are really important subjects out there, and we must, at our peril, pay attention, and give the matter real thought.
Governments can go haywire. European governments have fallen for guilt. Not just undeserved guilt, but guilt that makes no sense. So they pretend. They pretend that that the problems brought by uninvited immigrants must be ignored, so they can pretend they are being nice. It’s hard to take on difficult problems and work out ways to deal with them. It’s easier to avoid any fights and dissension. But the future is out there, waiting to be — what? You can ponder the possibilities.
Filed under: Africa, Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Developing Nations, Economics, Education, Heartwarming, History, Politics, Progressivism | Tags: Reducing Poverty, Remaking Humanity, The Infinite Credit Card
The Manhattan Contrarian (Francis Menton) wrote a while back:
In the progressive project to remake humanity and civilization, nothing counts but good intentions, and the details will all be worked out by experts, using the infinite credit card. And thus we get $1 trillion or so of annual “anti-poverty” spending that never makes a dent in poverty. As hard as that one is to top, nothing can top the delusional thinking on the subject of renewable energy, particularly the idea that it will be easy and costless to transition over a few years to a world where fossil fuels have been banished, and yet we want and need.
Today, from FEE (the Foundation for Economic Education) we have the encouraging headline “The World’s Poorest People are getting Richer Faster Than Anyone Else.” “The speed of poverty alleviation in the last 25 years has been historically unprecedented. Not only is the proportion of people in poverty at a record low, but in spite of adding 2 billion to the planet’s population, the overall number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen too.
As Johan Norberg writes in his book Progress, “If you had to choose a society to live in but did not know what your social or economic position would be, you would probably choose the society with the lowest proportion (not the lowest numbers) of poor, because this is the best judgement of the life of an average citizen.” Well, in 1820, 94 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty (less than $1.90 per day adjusted for purchasing power). In 1990 this figure was 34.8 percent, and in 2015, just 9.6 percent.
In the last quarter century, more than 1.25 billion people escaped extreme poverty – that equates to over 138,000 people (i.e., 38,000 more than the Parisian crowd that greeted Father Wresinski in 1987) being lifted out of poverty every day. If it takes you five minutes to read this article, another 480 people will have escaped the shackles of extreme of poverty by the time you finish. Progress is awesome. In 1820, only 60 million people didn’t live in extreme poverty. In 2015, 6.6 billion did not.
Do read the whole thing, I thought a little very good news might be welcome in the face of the outrage and anguish that are the daily fare of the media. No, it is not the result of the progressive project to remake humanity. It’s the result of plain old free market capitalism. Works every time.
Filed under: China, Developing Nations, Economics, Energy, Environment, Europe, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Freedom, Germany, Global Warming, Junk Science, Science/Technology | Tags: Destroying Capitalism, Income Redistribution, It's Not About the Climate
Hollywood is having the vapors, Chuckie Schumer released a statement:
President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement is a devastating failure of historic proportions,” Schumer said. “Future generations will look back on President Trump’s decision as one of the worst policy moves made in the 21st century because of the huge damage to our economy, our environment and our geopolitical standing.
At a news conference in Brussels in early February, 2015, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity—but to destroy capitalism.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
Socialists, intent on the wonders of social justice and the ‘better world’ of their dreams, never, never seem to pay any attention to the monumental failures of socialism everywhere it has been tried. The past 25 years have witnessed the greatest reduction in global poverty in the history of the world. An 80 % reduction in world poverty in only 36 years. Globalization, Free markets, free trade, international entrepreneurship. The free enterprise system, American style, which is our gift to the world. This is not the first time some greenie has blurted out the truth behind their campaign to protect the world from the horrors of the carbon dioxide we exhale every time we breathe. Go figure.
President Obama committed $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund, without authorization from Congress, about 30% of the $100 billion demanded from the United States to be shifted to trying to help poor nations deal with non-existent climate warming. They only got 1 billion before Obama left office and the U.S. was expected to come up with the other $2 billion promptly. According to researchers at MIT, if all nations met their targets for reducing carbon emissions, the impact on the climate at best would be likely to reduce global temperature rise by 0.2 degrees by the year 2100. That ‘s 2/10 of one degree C. Under the accord, China gets to continue building coal-fired plants and increasing emissions until 2030. The Climate Accords were a very bad deal for everyone but China.
CO2 represents only the smallest portion of atmospheric gasses. The most important atmospheric gas is water vapor — clouds. Carbon dioxide (what we exhale) is a fertilizer for plants and the slight increase has meant a greening world which has helped to feed the world’s hungry nations.
The terms of the Accord required countries to update their commitments every five years to make them more ambitious, starting in 2020, leading to an eventual 80 percent cut. If everybody met their commitments, the effect on the climate would be almost undetectable.
The Left is big on income redistribution, not theirs, of course, but other people’s. But as Margaret Thatcher said “Sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.” Their goal is not helping the poor— it is power. They just can’t get it through their pretty heads that socialism doesn’t work, and has never worked, everywhere it has been tried. But they are fixated on the idea of fixing annoying human nature, eliminating wars and other annoyances and in general concentrating all power in an educated elite like themselves in Washington D.C. ruling the world in perpetual wonderfulness.
Here’s President Trump’s statement.
* That’s Christiana Figueres in the light slate blue on the left.
ADDENDUM: I said above ‘helping poor nations to deal with “non-existent global warming”. That’s not correct. The Earth is always warming or cooling as it has done for millions of years. The British once skated on the Thames, and at another time grew wine grapes. If you have time, you might visit drroyspencer.com. He has posted “Good Climate Hunting (DJ. Trump, writer, director)” which is priceless, and then scroll down a little to “People’s Climate March on Saturday…through Snow” where he points out the differences in climate across the U.S. as greenies are marching. (Dr. Spencer runs the only accurate measurements of warming and cooling by satellite at University of Alabama at Huntsville.)
Filed under: China, Democrat Corruption, Developing Nations, Environment, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Junk Science, Media Bias, National Security, Politics, Progressivism, The United States
Back at the beginning of his first term, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton announced a foreign policy “pivot” to Asia. The road of good intentions chose another direction, and the big events continued to happen in the Middle East. Civil war in Syria, the rise of ISIS with accompanying terrorism and brutality, regime change in Egypt and Libya, and the continuing Iranian quest for nuclear weapons and regional dominance are the problems that have dominated the news and Obama’s response to those events has comprised his foreign policy record, and it is not a record that makes much of a legacy.
Obama dismissed ISIS as a “JV team,” was angered by the coup in Egypt, made a botch of Libya with the help of his Secretary of State who dismissed the whole thing with “We came, We saw, He died” and a round of laughter, when reporters told her he was dead. It is slowly becoming clear Obama has lied extensively to the American people about his “Iran Deal.”
The Mullahs in Iran really had no interest in a deal. They are interested in destroying Israel and in destroying America, and do not intend to be delayed or restrained. Obama believes that they care about their people and will use the funds returned to make life better for Iranian families. He believes he can turn the Middle East over to the Persians to run, and remove all American interference in that part of the world, which will mean peace. He apparently believes that all the problems in that part of the world are Bush’s fault for invading Iraq, and he has no interest in being disabused of his fanciful notions.
You can’t build a foreign policy legacy out of trying to avoid any confrontation at all. Obama’s playing his last hand and betting on the Paris Climate Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, by pretending they are not treaties, but some kind of deal that does not require the consent of Congress. But that has been his operating plan for some time.
So far on this trip, Obama has insulted Teresa May, Britain’s new Prime Minister, telling her that Britain would have to go the the back of the line for any trade deals since they didn’t pay attention when he told them to vote BREXIT down. Face-conscious China insulted President Obama by failing to provide the red-carpet stairway provided to all heads of state, forcing him to descend from the belly of Air Force One, a clear snub. Irwin Stelzer reported in the Weekly Standard:
When Obama raised the issue of China’s militarization of the islands it has constructed in the South China Sea, President Xi Jinping told him China would “unswervingly safeguard” its claims in the area. When the American president raised the issue of human rights, Xi told him not to interfere in China’s internal affairs. Perhaps the unkindest cut of all came when Xi praised the Paris agreement to limit carbon emissions, the issue on which Obama had come to take a victory lap, “It was under Chinese leadership that much of this progress was made.”
Xi was wrong on both of these counts: the Paris accord will not limit emissions, and China was a reluctant signatory to the agreement forged in Paris, largely by Obama, and whereas America agreed to drastic cuts in emissions, China made no such promise. All it agreed to do, at some date in the distant future—perhaps 2030 if that proves convenient—is to begin slowing the rate of increase of its emissions relative to the growth in the country’s GDP. Not a word about ending China’s financing coal plants in other countries—92 in 27 countries is the current count of the San Francisco-based Climate Policy Initiative, enough new coal-fired capacity to offset all the plant closures and emissions reductions planned in the United States for the next decade. No surprise that Xie Zhenhua, China’s senior climate change negotiator in Paris, says the deal struck there is “fair and just, comprehensive and balanced.”
The Senate will not ratify the treaty. Even if all the nations who have signed actually implemented their plans, it would reduce the growth of emissions only about half as much as the claimed 3.6º Fahrenheit which some scientists claim would reduce drought, floods, and other catastrophes which are not caused by increases in temperature. The Coalition of the Least Developed Nations agreed to go along because the rich nations agreed to give them at least $100 billion, but no one has started raising any money yet anyway. The panic about climate occurs only in the computer programs of the climate scientists who depend on climate panic for their jobs, their grants, and their reputations.
Obama apparently insulted the new Philippine president who then called President Obama the ‘son of a whore,’ so in general the big G-7 meeting didn’t go too well. Obama is off to Laos as the first U.S. President to visit that country.
ADDENDUM: Reports in from Laos, and snippets of President Obama’s speech, suggest that he’s up to his old tricks of apologizing for his country with little understanding of what actually went on in Laos, which was not as he suggests indiscriminate bombing. He actually said:
Over nine years — from 1964 to 1973 — the United States dropped more than two million tons of bombs here in Laos — more than we dropped on Germany and Japan combined during all of World War II. It made Laos, per person, the most heavily bombed country in history. As one Laotian said, the “bombs fell like rain.” Villages and entire valleys were obliterated. The ancient Plain of Jars was devastated. Countless civilians were killed. And that conflict was another reminder that, whatever the cause, whatever our intentions, war inflicts a terrible toll, especially on innocent men, women and children.
Our planes were bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail to prevent supplies coming down that trail to kill American troops from reaching Vietnam. It was a purposeful effort to save American lives, not indiscriminate and trying very hard not to kill civilians. Ask anyone who was there.
Filed under: Developing Nations, Free Markets, Freedom, History, India, Socialism, Statism | Tags: India's Untouchables, Market Forces, The Glories of Socialism
Let’s turn to some really good news:
This year marks the 25th anniversary of liberal reforms in India that led to the dismantling of many socialist economic policies and the end of the draconian License Raj. Liberalization has changed life for many in India over the past couple of decades, although much more remains to be done. Just the middle class alone has exploded from 30 million people in 1991 to 300 million in 2014.
So this is a good occasion to tell the story of perhaps the most unexpected beneficiaries of these reforms: the rising Dalit millionaires. In recent years, many thousands of so-called “untouchables,” or Dalits, members of the lowest group in the Indian caste order, have risen out of poverty to become wealthy business owners, some even millionaires.
Westerners are often unable to grasp just what it has meant to be born into a caste of the poorest of the poor without hope of ever moving out of the caste. Caste was determined by birth, and being born an untouchable meant a lifetime of being trapped in low income “dirty” jobs. Marriage could only be within a caste, and there was no hope of advancement for one’s children. Systematic discrimination locked in place for generations.
The opening up of production processes to market forces created new opportunities never before possible. “Starting small and scraping together resources and capital, many of these Dalits now run business empires that actually provide employment to upper caste members.”
There is Thomas Barnabas who was born into a family of bonded laborers, all eight of whom lived in a one-room house. Thomas recalls being thrown out of an upper caste friend’s home as a child after eating and drinking there because he was “untouchable.” They then proceeded to purify and wash the floor where he sat and threw away the dishes from which he ate.
Thomas saw the unmet demand for the processing of industrial waste that was generated by large corporations like Dell, Samsung and Mercedes that had set up manufacturing plants in India after liberalization. He now owns an industrial waste recycling and disposal business that has an annual sales revenue of $2,3 million, and employs 200 people, including many from upper castes.
Do read the whole thing. Shows what can happen with free markets and free people. Not perfect by any means, but improving.
Meanwhile, back in the Americas, thousands turned out, with their pots and pans, crying “We Are Hungry!” in Venezuela and chased President Nicholas Maduro down the street. Only last week some broke into the zoo and killed a starving horse for the meat. Socialism sometimes sounds good, but it is always a lie.
Filed under: Africa, Bureaucracy, Crime, Democrat Corruption, Developing Nations, Domestic Policy, Election 2016, Foreign Policy, Media Bias, National Security, Politics, Russia, The United States | Tags: Bill Clinton's Speeches, Hillary Clinton, The World's Dictators and Oligarchs, U.S. Secretary of State
I’m sure you have heard of the movie “Clinton Cash” but have you watched it? Peter Schweitzer is an American author, and political consultant. He is president of the Government Accountability Institute, and a former William J. Casey Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. If you are curious about Mr. Schweizer, here he is for a speech at Hillsdale College. talking about “Money and Politics.”
Hillary famously claimed that they left the White House “dead broke,” which is, of course absurd. Congress, shamed by Harry Truman’s plight when he left the presidency with only his Army pension to rely on, has provided a generous pension for former presidents as well as provision for an office and office help, whatever an ex-president needs. Hillary’s silly claim was the source for many a cartoon, but she now lives on a gated estate, and all her pantsuits are designer creations. Curious. You should see the movie before you vote.
American Elephants 