American Elephants


Do You Feel Properly Guilty? by The Elephant's Child

What is it about Liberals? Why do they want us all to feel guilty? We are not supposed to be thankful on Thanksgiving, because we should feel guilty about the Native Americans. We should feel guilty if we call them Indians rather than “Native Americans”.

Some, “Antifa” or something else, have been out rioting and tearing down statues again this weekend, The statues are torn down because we should feel guilty about putting up a statue to someone currently considered unworthy. like George Washington because he once owned a few slaves. Though historically he did not like slavery and had no wish to create a plantation out of Mount Vernon. But that was 244 years ago, and statues of George Washington must be destroyed today to assuage our guilt? Makes no sense whatsoever.

George Washington, father of our country, had a few things more going for him than just the possibility that he owned a very few slaves. Many plantation owners did own slaves at the time, Society, worldwide had not yet decided that owning slaves was wrong. The young people out to riot and break windows and loot and break things seem far more interested in doing that and getting away with it because they were part of a big bunch of people all having fun doing it. Had they been promptly arrested and stuck in cells until someone bailed them out, the whole rationale for rioting might be somewhat different.

Those who choose to feel guilty about celebrating Thanksgiving because we displaced the Indians, might remember that the Native Americans did a lot of massacres as well, of the intruding Englishmen. The history of civilization is full of people being displaced by other warlike tribes, and civilizations have arisen and vanished all over the earth. Supposedly that is why we study history to understand how the world has changed in the past and will undoubtedly change more in the future. But we really don’t need to feel guilty about a past that we had nothing to do with.

If you recall, when Joe Biden decided to run for the office of the presidency, he said that he wanted a black woman as his vice president, and so chose Kamala Harris. So he wanted the credit for choosing a black woman who might become the first black and the first woman to become president rather than choosing someone for their outstanding qualifications and skills.

If you appear in public without wearing a mask, you are supposed to feel guilty. Governors have ordered people to refrain from having Thanksgiving dinners because of Covid. Wags have tacked lifesize representations of those governors to windows where people might be having a Thanksgiving dinner against governors orders. Those governors who issued orders and then had their own celebration were quickly discovered and mocked in the press, and theoretically made to feel properly guilty. Anyone departing from the conventional wisdom of the moment must be guilty, and exposed.

It was hard to choose an image, because there are so many. All the members of the House abjectly kneeling on the floor of Congress. AOC weeping as she clings to a chain-link fence staring out at what turned out to be an empty parking lot that supposedly represented imprisoned illegals at the border, Elizabeth Warren emphasizing her “Indian heritage”, once even with a Native American. All the previous presidents conferring happily with Vladimir Putin, but only Trump being accused of some kind of wrongdoing across a table from him.



Scary Times Ahead! by The Elephant's Child

Reminder: There is not a “President Elect” until the Electoral College meets on December 14. But it does look like it is going to be Joe Biden, in spite of how he managed to get there. He is moving quickly to try to establish his administration, which is not encouraging. A very significant percentage of Democrat voters had never heard of the Joe and Hunter Biden scandals, and really want the matter formally investigated. That, in itself is a fairly scary note and suggests that our negativity about our news media is not far misplaced.

Joe Biden’s first big appointment is John Kerry to be the new “Climate Czar”. His qualifications rest on his being Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, and initiating the Paris Climate Accords. Uh huh. The United States provides about 14% of worldwide CO2 emissions. U.S. and European emissions have remained steady or declined significantly. Increases have come from the developing world, China, India and Africa, as they add electricity, air-conditioning and automobiles. The move to approved wind and solar energy has accounted for about 9% of our needed electricity supplies. If you stop and think for a moment about our energy needs: manufacturing, mobility, light, heat, comfort, food, only begins to touch upon our energy requirements.

I am certainly not a climate scientist, but I do have a unique outlook on the problem. I grew up on 400 acres in the mountains of Idaho at about 4,000′. We produced our own power with a small dam, a flue and our own power plant. We put up ice in the winter for summer refrigeration, warmed things with our hot springs water, fireplaces and wood stoves. We finally got Idaho power in the late 40s. Few people would have the natural assets we did. Nevertheless, I do read the science, daily.

Other than the autistic Swedish child, there’s not much evidence of a climate crisis. We have tried wind and solar energy in many forms, and found them wanting. Nuclear plants work nicely, but since Chernobyl and Fukushima, people are scared of nuclear energy. We have successful dams in our major rivers, but they don’t produce enough energy for the country as a whole. “Fracking”, simply a new way of extracting natural gas, has made us energy independent, and no longer dependent on Arab oil. Great outcry against coal-fired or natural-gas fired power plants because of the insistence that CO2, (which is a natural fertilizer for plants and is helping to feed a hungry world), is to be blamed for global warming, which is simply a natural process of warming and cooling that has gone on for centuries and centuries.

I have been following John Kerry’s career since he was a Vietnam War protester, got drafted, and had a subsequent career in government. I do not have a favorable impression of him, and would prefer that he not be in charge of anything whatsoever. He promises to fix CO2 and Covid-19 as well because they go together somehow? Both in the air? I think its an enormous amount of sheer bunk, but that seems to be what we’re stuck with. You might get in touch with your Congressmen, and study up. Good websites linked in the sidebar.

Lots of big ideas to fix society after the dreadful years of the Bad Orange Man’s successful economy, improved black lives, Middle East Peace, and successful management of the Covid Crisis. “Warp Speed” has meant that vaccine for Covid will be available in mid-December.

Here are the ten executive orders that Joe Biden says he will sign the first day he’s in office, via CNN.

Implement the already-existing Clean Air Act, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation by developing new fuel economy standards to ensure all new sales for light- and medium-duty vehicles will be electrified, and annual improvements for heavy-duty vehicles.

Double down on liquid fuels like advanced biofuels and make agriculture a key part of the solution to the climate crisis. Reduce emissions and cut consumer costs through new standards for appliance and building efficiency.

Other than that, he intends to end “gun violence”, which essentially means banning all guns. He will improve the abortion situation, so anybody can get an abortion any time for any reason. How that fits with his Catholic faith, I’m not sure. But if your interest is in easier abortions, Biden’s your guy. Going to offer citizenship to all the illegal aliens, and invite more in.

Interestingly, 44 states voted without any allegations of skullduggery. Election went off smoothly and almost all of the votes were counted in about six hours after the polls closed. No allegations of irregularities by Republican-governed states other than Georgia.

A Big-Tech expert says that Google’s “manipulations “Shifted” at least six million votes to Joe Biden. That might suggest a call to your congressman, at least a Republican one.

Joe Biden still may nominate Sen. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to cabinet positions. The good website www.issuesinsights suggested a little “turnabout is fair play” with an article entitled “Impeach Joe Biden”. Made my day.



There are Increasing Covid-19 Cases by The Elephant's Child
See the source image

Joe Biden is coming up with new regulations, new advisors, new treatments. He may insist that everyone wear masks, but the role of masks is much misunderstood. A mask protects other people from your exhalations, spittle, coughs or sneezes. It does not protect you from other people. The mask is meant keep your spittle in. Your protection from other people’s coughs or spittle is dependent on your washing your hands obsessively and frequently, social-distancing, and not touching your face. Almost counter-intuitive. Stay home. You may soon be ordered to do so. Governors are all over the map with their orders and directions, and may or may not know what they are talking about. Apparently Thanksgiving dinner is out. Governors may order you to forget it.

I am remaining confined at home, ordering groceries delivered. Difficult. The folks that pack the groceries don’t know that bananas must be a little greenish at the ends, and no brown spots. They don’t know that you sniff at the stem end of a cantaloupe to see if it smells like cantaloupe. If it doesn’t it’s no good. Those are the little complications of shopping at the grocery store. Who knew that the bagels you ordered might turn out to be whole wheat bagels? Whoever heard of whole wheat bagels? Don’t open the door to anyone.

Joe Biden’s Coronavirus Adviser urges a lockdown for “4 to 6 weeks.” He suggests that “we could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers, for losses to small companies, to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that. (The doctor is a little light on his understanding of economics) He wrote that the problem with the March to May lockdown was that it was not uniformly stringent across the country.

Biden’s four leading priorities: Covid-19, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change. No delusions that a Biden administration will be good for liberty or limited government.

Breitbart headline” “Biden to Make Combatting Climate Change an “All-of-Government Agenda.” Well, there we go. There is nothing anyone can do to “combat climate change.” The climate has been changing for millions of years. The climate today is very much like it was 1,000 years ago. Carbon dioxide is a natural fertilizer for plants, and crops around the world are bountiful. Hungry people are being fed. Joe Biden will formulate a governing strategy to curb carbon emissions by maximizing executive authority. He will rejoin the Paris Climate Accord on his first day at the White House and create a new division within the Department of Justice to combat pollution.There’s a proposal to spen $2 trillion over four years to combat climate change.

One million jew jobs in the auto industry to boost the production of energy-efficient vehicles. Legislation to incentivize individuals to trade in their gas=powered vehicles for ones running on either electricity or hydrogen. He apparently wants to adopt a 100 percent clean-electricity standard by 2035.

This might have a rather large impact on the coal and natural gas industries that produce about 63 percent of all electricity in the country. You cannot trust your government. You have to be informed, and know what these nutcases are up to.



Joe Biden Made a Speech by The Elephant's Child

He said he had a “mandate” He just seemed a little unsure about what the mandate was about. It seems to be about the climate, but polls show that people aren’t particularly worried about the climate. The Earth has warmed slightly, and there is a little increased CO2, which is plant food. Carbon dioxide is a natural fertilizer for plants, and crops around the world are growing a little more bountiful, and there are far fewer hungry people.

Joe Biden wants to ban “fracking” which is simply an easier, cleaner way of extracting natural gas. He waffles a lot, I guess because he doesn’t know what fracking is, only that it is clearly bad. Raising the price of gasoline drastically would be crippling for the economy- a jump from around $2 to over $4 would make people sit up and notice.

Since somewhere around 1988 politicians and activists have tried to sell the American people on the idea that fossil fuels are bad, and that we have access to remedies. We don’t. Wind and solar don’t work. We have pretty conclusively proved that. They simply do not and cannot produce enough energy to run a modern society. What gets transitioned is your standard of living.

You can replace coal, for example, with natural gas, but you haven’t accomplished anything. The wind does not blow all the time, and may not blow for days, and some days it may blow too hard for the turbines. The sun does not shine every day. There are clouds. Some days it rains. Nuclear power works, but since Chernobyl and Fukushima in Japan, there’s not much interest in nuclear energy. Wind turbines and solar arrays cannot be manufactured or installed without massive quantities of fossil fuels. Nothing happens in our modern world without fossil fuels, from our manufacturers to a trip to the grocery store where most of the products are produced with the use of fossil fuels, to the fleets of trucks that transport goods around the country.

Democrats claim there is no election fraud, but seven Milwaukee Wards report more presidential votes than registered voters. State voter turnout is nearly 90 percent, which is virtually impossible. The Climate Crisis and the Covid Crisis are melding. The WHO Director-General said the pandemic has given new impetus to the need to accelerate efforts to respond to climate change, which they said in 2018 was the greatest health challenge of the 21st century. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon says it’s time to “Reinvent Capitalism Post-Coronavirus. But never fear, Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian has spoken with Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, about building a better Tech Industry.

Enter Solyndra in the blank space over Bob Hope’s head in the sidebar. That was a massive and costly solar experiment. And as for wind farms, it costs over $35,000 to dismantle a single worn-out turbine, if I remember correctly.

My favorite voter remains the elderly gentleman who voted, who was born in 1823. There are other surprising voters, but that one takes the cake.



As The World Turns, Etc, Etc. by The Elephant's Child
https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/311c4b7b075d2ddce31a7900aa7bc7eec303adc4/c=9-0-593-439&r=x408&c=540x405/local/-/media/2015/07/04/USATODAY/USATODAY/635715986893810918-Screen-Shot-2015-07-04-at-9.12.29-AM.jpg

RECENT EARTH CLIMATE HISTORY
600 – 200 B.C.: An Unnamed Cold Period
200 BC to about AD 600: The Roman Warming
600 to 900: The Dark Ages Cold Period
900 to 1300: Medieval Warming
1300 to 1850: The Little Ice Age (two stages)

MODERN CLIMATE HISTORY
1850 – 1940: Especially between 1920-1940: Warming
1940 to 1975: Cooling Trend
1976-1978: Sudden Warming Spurt
1979 to 1998: +1º
1998 to 2011: +1º

The Medieval Warming period led to the Renaissance  which began approximately in 1300 and ended approximately in 1700. A bountiful time, wine grapes grew in England, food was plentiful and there was a flowering of learning and art. Think Michelangelo, Raphael, and Copernicus among others. What I’m getting at here, is the idea that if we are facing climate doom, the world is going to die in 10 or 12 years if we don’t save it by stopping “fracking,” stop using oil and gasoline, and eliminating plastic bags. That’s what you get for listening to “celebrities” instead of studying up on the science.

I was an English Major, which means that I learned how to read hard stuff, and read a lot. That does not mean that I’m always right, much as I like to think so. Christiana Figueres, the General Secretary of the IPCC, was quite sure that the object of “climate change” was as a tool to get rid of Capitalism. Leftists do not like capitalism, which seems a bit strange, but economics is not their strong point. Capitalists to them are business CEOs and owners, and the “Rich”. The Left is entitled to be in charge because they are morally superior, it would be helpful if we all understood that.

Conservatives have long sneered at the Left because they were the Southern slave owners in the Civil War, but the Left has ended that accusation by electing the first black president, who served for two terms, which puts them back in the morally superior category. Global Warming, plastic bags, ending fracking, and giving taxpayer money to illegal aliens adds to their sense of superiority.

America is a nation of immigrants, as you know, which leads them to believe that immigrants are special, and just because they can’t be bothered to enter the country the legal way, shouldn’t keep them from sharing in the bounty of America. So Leftists care about illegal immigrants, which means hating I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and making sure that illegal immigrants get stimulus money. It is that mindset that makes them believe that if little immigrant children were kept in cages, it was obviously done by conservatives, contrary to the actual actions of the Obama administration. Once you get the “entitled to be in charge because they are morally superior” theme firmly in mind, it makes understanding all the other stuff simple. Or at least it helps.

Elizabeth Warren ranted that President Trump was trying to kill everybody in the world because he would not correctly address climate change, or something like that. The very slight warming we have had has brought enormous blessings to the world. The slight increase in the amount of CO² in the atmosphere has been a bounty for mankind for it is a natural fertilizer for plants. More bountiful crops mean the hungry are well fed and there is less starvation in the world. Forests grow more as well, and there is more wood for fuel and for building homes.

In case there is any confusion, Elizabeth Warren is calling her climate program “The Blue New Deal”. Don’t want any confusion with the Green thing.

Do make time to visit Climate Depot and Dr. Roy Spencer and the others listed in the sidebar. There’s an enormous amount of hype out there, and the best defense are informed citizens. Solar energy and wind energy are nice, when they aren’t killing birds, but they cannot provide the energy needed by a modern society. Just doesn’t work.



Environmental Mismanagement Is Only Where It Starts by The Elephant's Child

We have had some nice rain over the last two days, and the skies have cleared, the air has cleared, and we’re pretty much back to normal. California is not. The government is not sure at all just who they should listen to, and the result has been a catastrophe.

Environmentalists want everyone to believe that we can forego nasty petroleum fuels, and rely on clean, beautiful wind and solar energy which is free, well, except for the huge cost of wind turbines, their upkeep, the rare minerals required to construct them and the underlying simple fact that the wind does not blow all the time, nor does the sun shine on solar arrays all the time. There are cloudy days and rainy days when neither wind nor sun are noticeable. Wind and sun may be visible, but they are not necessarily available when needed.  We are so accustomed to having energy at the flick of a switch that we don’t really give it any thought at all.

At the dawn of the nuclear age, we thought we could power anything with nuclear energy, but then there was the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, still an abandoned city, I believe. And then the Fukushima accident in Japan in 2011 in  Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, which was started by the Tòhoku earthquake and tsunami. A couple of disasters like that and interest in nuclear plants begins to fade. In the United States we have some great river systems and dams that produce lots of reliable energy, but the environmentalists squawk about the fish runs and damage the dams do. Probably everything that has an upside also has a downside. Some want to remove all dams, just because.

We are uncertain about costs and benefits, usefulness and dangers, needs, in other words we don’t know very much about the problems at all, and are apt to fall for anything that sounds good, particularly if it is fairly remote. When it’s your house that burned down, you pay a little closer attention.

Dr. Roy Spencer PhD,  who runs the satellites that measure the earths’ temperature for NASA, has several basis articles at his website on, for example, “Global Warming 101”, “Global Warming Background”, “Global Warming Natural or Manmade?” which you will find useful. There are others in the sidebar, and each of those will direct you to other scientific sites.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is getting a well-deserved batch of criticism for his handling of the wildfires. The Native Americans learned to minimize the damage by controlled small fires and cutting away dead trees and brush, but we moderns have had more trouble getting our minds around the problem. Did you know it costs something over $43,000 to dismantle a single wind turbine?



Blame It All On Global Warming, That Lets You Off the Hook! by The Elephant's Child

Washington State is still smoky, some local fires, mostly I believe, smoke drifted north from California. Visibility is not normal, ( Rain forecast for Friday) but we’re told in Eastern Washington, across the mountains, visibility is about the length of a football field, at least considerably worse than here.

Our incompetent Democrat governor, Jay Inslee, follows in the steps of California’s incompetent governor Gavin Newsom, to proclaim the wildfires are because of global warming, and we just have to give up our cars, or at least switch to electric cars, and be kinder to Mother Earth so she doesn’t punish us for our fossil fuels. Which is all nonsense.

Sorry. Carbon Dioxide is not the control switch for the climate of the earth. The Sun is.

We had Ice Ages and Heat Waves long before we had  gasoline powered cars, or even discovered fossil fuels.  Native Americans did controlled burning, thinned out brush, and even cut down trees to keep their lands safe from fire.  California is on fire because the governor has not funded the necessary cleanup, as is Washington State.

Lots more expensive when you have to pay lots of firefighters coming for high pay to fight the fires in our forests in our forests, but you can’t be blamed if it is the result of a global pandemic.  Our respective governors, having never bothered to study up even slightly, accept as gospel the party line. Trump bad, Paris Climate Accord essential to save the Earth. Trouble is the scientists started making “models”to help them decide what to do, but they were too arrogant to grasp that they didn’t know enough to make viable models, because there is so much we don’t yet understand about the Sun and the Earth and the galaxy and the interactions between them.

The debate is over around climate change. Just come to the state of California, observe it with your own eyes a grinning Newsom told reporters while touring the fire-ravaged North Complex near Oroville. It’s not an intellectual debate, it’s not even debatable. The debate is over around climate change. Just come to the state of California, observe it with your own eyes,a grinning Newsom told reporters while touring the fire-ravaged North Complex near Oroville. It’s not an intellectual debate, it’s not even debatable.

Breitbart reported this morning:

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said Thursday that the August Complex Fire has burned 471,185 acres in the Elk Creek and Stonyford area, surpassing the 2018 Mendocino Complex Fire, which burned 459,123 acres.

Six of the largest fires in California’s history have taken place in 2020. Cal Fire said 29 major wildfires are active and more than 3.1 million acres have burned in the state since the beginning of the season.

The National Interagency Fire Center said 102 large fires have burned a combined 4.4 million acres in 12 states in the western United States, resulting in some two dozen deaths in California, Oregon, and Washington.

In California, five people were killed in the LNU Lightning Complex, 10 were killed in the North Complex, and one each was killed in the CZU August Lightning Complex, August Lightning Complex, Tatham Fire, and Hills Fires.

So there you go, 19 people killed so far, but just blame it all on global warming. I grew up on 400 acres bordered by National Forest at about 4,000′. Many of our closest friends were Forest Service people, and others were loggers or ran lumber mills.

Bernie Sanders is using the current wildfires to push for a Green New Deal, of course blaming Trump who he says “rejects science and calls climate change a hoax.” Christiana Figueres, who was the General Secretary of the IPCC said at a news conference that the idea of Climate Change was the best weapon they had for destroying Capitalism.

You can natter on all you want about Global Warming, but if you had thinned the forests, rid them of dry brush, we would not have the forest fires of three states poisoning our air and blanketing us with smoke.



AOC, Joe Biden, And the “Green New Deal” by The Elephant's Child

I was worried about Joe Biden when he said that he wanted to ban plastic bags. Cloth bags at the grocery store are dangerous to one’s health. Meat drippings, oozing from the packaged meat, from vegetables impregnated into a cloth bag creates a veritable poisonous package to be carried back and forth to the grocery store, to cause all sorts of illness, but when faced with “plastic”, a word that currently occupies the same category of words as racist, gets righteously ignored.

But that was only the beginning. Joe Biden has put AOC in charge of his climate stance, and adopted her “Green New Deal,” which would be a disaster. He wants to ban “fracking” which has made the United States energy independent, and has allowed us to sell oil and natural gas to other nations., as well as provide ourselves with all the energy we need.

We had the Swedish child climate activist Greta Thunberg over to tell us we have no time to waste for we are all doomed, and even AOC gives us only a few months until disaster. But they are erroneously assuming that CO2 is dooming the planet. The climate of the earth is determined by the action of the sun, not CO2. Slight increases in carbon in the atmosphere acts as a natural fertilizer for plants, and increases the growth not only of foodstuffs, but of forests around the world. Completely beneficial.

Here’s Bjorn Lomberg writing about “How climate change alarmists are actually endangering the planet“, and he does know what he is talking about. AOC has attracted lots of attention because she is always searching for the nearest microphone, but she has become a celebrity of sorts because of her appalling ignorance, which Conservatives find funny.

Our contemporary society runs on energy. Everybody got all excited about wind and solar, because how wonderful to power our modern world with natural resources. They do produce some energy, when the wind blows, or when the sun shines, but you  may have noticed that the sun sinks beneath the horizon at night. Aside from clouds and rain, of course.  And there are few places in the entire world where the wind blows at a steady 35 mph, even in the windiest places. Some solar panels on your roof can get you a break on your power costs, but not much of one, and the idea that you can power a modern society with either wind or solar is absurd. Nuclear power works efficiently, but people are afraid of it because of Chernobyl.

Bloomberg News recently reported that California will use Diesel this summer to keep  electricity going when the utility cuts power to prevent live wires from sparking fires in high wind. Nobody thinks all that much about power. You just turn on the light switch, and the lights go on, except when they don’t.

Here’s the Green New Deal from the Green Party:

The Green New Deal will convert the decaying fossil fuel economy into a new, green economy that is environmentally sustainable, economically secure and socially just.  The Green New Deal starts with transitioning to 100% green renewable energy (no nukes or natural gas) by 2030.  It would immediately halt any investment in fossil fuels (including natural gas) and related infrastructure. The Green New Deal will guarantee full employment and generate up to 20 million new, living-wage jobs, as well as make the government the employer of last resort with a much-needed major public jobs program.

Democrats remain fascinated with Roosevelt’s New Deal. They believe it ended the Great Depression, which was very bad indeed. Franklin Roosevelt tried all sorts of remedies, and succeeded in extending the Depression for seven years longer than it needed to be, if he had not applied the wrong remedies. Two economists at UCLA proved that conclusively several years ago. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the war that followed brought an end to the Depression. not FDR and not the New Deal.

The whole climate change panic thing has been a fraud from the first. designed to eliminate Capitalism. That’s what created the United States, made it a powerful and rich nation, and we certainly can’t have that. At a news conference in early February of 2015, Christiana Figueres, the general secretary of the UN’s IPCC revealed that eliminating Capitalism was the goal. Enter her name in the sidebar over Bob Hope’s head and all sorts of information will come up. The Green New Deal is just another one of the frauds on the ignorant.

Study up a little on Climate. There are a number of websites in the left sidebar, and each of those list a multitude of other reliable websites. There are large numbers of people out there trying to make big changes, and you need to know what they are trying to do to our country and to you. Socially just, indeed.



As The World Turns and Other Stories of the Moment by The Elephant's Child

          RECENT EARTH CLIMATE HISTORY

600 – 200 B.C.: An Unnamed Cold Period
200 BC to about AD 600: The Roman Warming
600 to 900: The Dark Ages Cold Period
900 to 1300: Medieval Warming
1300 to 1850: The Little Ice Age (two stages)

MODERN CLIMATE HISTORY

1850 – 1940: Especially between 1920-1940: Warming
1940 to 1975: Cooling Trend
1976-1978: Sudden Warming Spurt
1979 to 1998: +1º
1998 to 2011: +1º

The Medieval Warming period led to the Renaissance  which began approximately in 1300 and ended approximately in 1700. A bountiful time, wine grapes grew in England, food was plentiful and there was a flowering of learning and art. Think Michelangelo, Raphael, and Copernicus among others. What I’m getting at here, is the idea that if we are facing climate doom, the world is going to die in 10 or 12 years if we don’t save it by stopping “fracking,” using oil and gasoline, and eliminating plastic bags. That’s what you get for listening to “celebrities” instead of studying up on the science.

I was an English Major, which meant that I learned how to read hard stuff, and read a lot. That does not mean that I’m always right, but I do like to think so. Christiana Figueres was quite sure that the object of “climate change” was as a tool to get rid of Capitalism. Leftists do not like capitalism, which seems a bit strange, but economics is not their strong point. Capitalists are business CEOs and owners, and the “Rich:”. The Left is simply entitled to be in charge because they are morally superior.

Conservatives have long sneered at the Left because they were the Southern slave owners in the Civil War, but the Left has ended that accusation by electing the first black president, who served for two terms, which puts them back in the morally superior category. Global Warming, plastic bags, ending fracking, and giving taxpayer money to illegal aliens adds to their superiority.

America is a nation of immigrants, as you know, which leads them to believe that immigrants are special, and just because they can’t be bothered to enter the country the legal way, shouldn’t keep them from sharing in the bounty of America. So Leftists care about illegal immigrants, which means hating I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and making sure that illegal immigrants get stimulus money. It is that mindset that makes them believe that if little immigrant children were kept in cages, it was obviously done by conservatives, contrary to the actual actions of the Obama administration. Once you get the “entitled to be in charge because they are morally superior” theme firmly in mind, it makes understanding all the other stuff simple. Or at least it helps.

Then there’s this: From Climate Realism and Climate Depot:

Among the top articles in a May 19 Google News search for “climate change” were a slew of articles claiming climate change causes cancer. CNBC and several other major news outlets published the claims, citing American Cancer Society (ACS) activists making the assertion. The line of reasoning is preposterous. And even if the ACS line of reasoning were sound, the line of reasoning would indicate that climate change is reducing cancer incidence and mortality.

The CNBC article is titled “Climate change is fueling extreme weather that lowers cancer survival rate and threatens prevention.” The article points out ACS line of reasoning as “[1] Climate change has triggered more frequent weather disasters like hurricanes and wildfires that [2] release deadly carcinogens into communities and [3] delay access to cancer treatment.” Each of the three prongs of the argument is ridiculous, and the three in combination give new meaning to the term “far-fetched.”

That’s a pretty good indication into how the news gets so weird, and wrong ideas seem to prevail. The fact that it is an election year means that politics rears its ugly head, and before you know it, all is confusion.  Fight back.



Being Prepared for Disaster, But What and How? by The Elephant's Child

The lockdown has become a story of its own. This kind of decision has to be done, I understand, by governors, who are doing so with too little information. Northern California has reported an increase in suicide. There are apparently large numbers of people who don’t have a financial cushion should they suddenly be out of work. The need for food banks is way up.

I don’t, offhand, recall seeing much in the way of what one might call good housekeeping, by which I mean being prepared for  unemployment, disaster, power outage, earthquake and such. I’ve been through flood, lightning strike, being snowed in, and (in California, of course) earthquake, several times. My first earthquake occurred when I was just putting dishes away, and they came flying out of the cupboards as fast as I tried to put them in. Scary! Some quakes were fairly large, like the Northridge quake in Southern California. You can tell they are bigger when they get a name. (Like viruses)

I just looked up dam collapses, and they have occurred all over the world, usually from improper monitoring. 230,000 died in a the collapse of the Bangiao Dam in China in 1976 that the Chinese kept secret for years. We just had a bad dam collapse in Michigan, apparently improper maintenance or regulation of maintenance.

As you get older, you are more aware of these disasters, and at least begin to recognize that bad stuff can happen, and you have to be somewhat prepared. Parents usually don’t recognize what their children do not know, and the next generation grows up unprepared. Young people don’t know what questions to ask.

This year’s college graduates face a troubled climate. Municipal and State lockdowns, high unemployment, particularly among the low-paying, high turnover jobs usually available for those starting out.

What do you tell your kids? Save like crazy until you have $1,000. tucked away in an emergency fund? Is that enough? Don’t live directly below a dam? Or do you just instruct them to pay attention to the news and know what is going on around you? I still have a little lamp on a dresser that was once a lovely long-necked vase, neck removed in an earthquake shortly after my parents were married, as a reminder.

I notice that in the article about the collapse of the Eden dam in Michigan’s Midland county, the article says “the dam collapsed, in a failure experts are attributing to shoddy maintenance and climate change. 

Sorry, it has nothing to do with climate change. The climate has been changing constantly for millions of years, and will go on peacefully doing so, probably for several more millions. You can believe the Swedish kid and AOC if you choose, but they do not know what they are talking about.

(The picture is of a hailstorm somewhere south of the border, several years ago. I do not remember how far south, but I was astounded that it was hail, and at the quantity, but neglected to keep a note of where and when.)

Question? Do other countries or other cultures do a better job of preparing for disasters? Obviously China does not, but that is the Communist way. They do not want any publicity that does not reflect well on Communism. That is common to all communist countries.



No, You Cannot Have “Climate Change” As An Official Cause of Death. by The Elephant's Child

Those who are sure the Earth will die within just a few years from the horrors of climate change, obviously, having gotten nowhere with trying to portray the world’s illegal immigrants as refugees from climate change, now are demanding that “climate change” be listed as the cause of death on death certificates. Tom Lifson of American Thinker suggests that:

The widely observed practice of listing Coronavirus as the cause of death for anyone who died with it, not necessarily of it, has worked wonders in scaring people into accepting previously unheard-of abrogation of constitutionally guaranteed rights.

The seed for this propaganda offensive was just planted in a spinoff publication of The Lancet, the formerly prestigious British medical journal that has fallen to the forces of political correctness.

Of course they have been trying for several years to portray many of the illegal aliens crossing, unwanted, over the borders of countries not their own, as “Climate refugees”, but most people seems to regard that as obvious nonsense.

I’m sticking with the former secretary of the IPCC, one of the people behind the infamous Paris Accords  which we have formally rejected, to cries of anguish from the Democrats.

In early February of 2015, Christiana Figueres revealed at a news conference that the object of the “climate crisis” was in reality not to save the Earth from the degradation of a climate disaster, but to eliminate capitalism. They truly hate the economic system that has made us free and wealthy among nations, and successful in every way.  Rather than try to learn from our freedom and success, and have some freedom and success of their own, they would rather get rid of the system entirely so we can be as miserable as they are.  Odd thinking, but there you are. And seen in that light, the climate alarmists prove over and over Ms. Figueres revelation.

There is no “climate crisis”. The Earth has been warming and cooling for millions of years, and will probably go right on doing so for another million. The people who die from climate change usually refused to evacuate in the wake of a hurricane, or to believe in the threat of a flood. We do have hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and earthquakes, tsunamis, and dams breaking, as just happened in Minnesota. Forest fires are a greater problem in Australia than in this country, tsunamis  more common in the Far East. Listing “climate change” on the death certificate is simply designed to give the climatistas some more useful statistics for their propaganda. Remember that one of their aims is to end the use of fossil fuels so they can power the country with wind and solar, which unfortunately cannot provide the energy needed for a modern society.



Joe Biden Has Chosen AOC As His Climate Adviser by The Elephant's Child

People have wondered, but the current economic slowdown will have almost no effect on the climate. To the contrary, a new paper finds that the slight increase in CO2 in the atmosphere means that the Earth is going to gain nearly three times as much green matter as was predicted by the IPCC’s AR5. From Patrick J. Michaels: That means we will meet the Paris Accords demand, and plentiful crops will help to feed a hungry world.  All good.  Most of the modern global warming that appears in the sensitive models is clearly too strong.  Climate is a key to the world’s food supply. In the 1970s Global Cooling led to widespread droughts — there had been 30 years of cooling, and as a consequence dwindling grain reserves, and most of the world relies on grain. Grains are the world’s basic food, and when food supplies fail, millions die.

Models are not the real world. Scientists put in what they know for sure, which isn’t really all that much, add things that they are pretty sure of, and at some point they add a lot of guesses about the way things are that may or may not be true. The models are derived from computer models that are meant to predict what the stock market will do. Since we are all fabulously wealthy, and nobody has gotten the dread COVID-19 disease, you surely understand that models are a very imperfect method of projecting what will be in the future. Sometimes we get it partly right, and sometimes not, even when we adequately put in the past, but it lets us make an attempt to understand what may happen in the future, and our guesses are clearly better for next week than for 20 years ahead. But think how boring life would be if we already knew what the future would be. If the future looks bad, we can try to prepare.

If you want to understand more about the climate, see the links in the sidebar, or go to Dr. Roy Spencer’s website. He has a brief introduction to Global Warming 101 and climate that is very useful. Dr. Spencer runs the satellites that measure the temperatures of the world for NASA with Dr. John Christy, and he writes a blog about all things climate.

The Democrats presumed candidate for the election this fall is Obama’s Vice President Joe Biden. Vice President Biden has chosen Alexandria Ocasio Cortez to be his Climate authority, which is an even scarier possibility than Mr. Biden himself, with his ‘senior moments’.

Rep. AOC tweeted back in early February:

Fracking is destroying our land and our water. It is wreaking havoc on our communities’ health. We must do our job to protect our future from the harms caused by the fracking industry. That is why I am proud to introduce the Fracking Ban Act with Rep Darren Soto today. (with a big Ban Fracking Nationwide sign)

She is a big “Green New Deal” fan, (the “New Deal” thrown in for the Rooseveltian touch.) “Fracking” is the way that our geologists have found to release natural gas from where it is trapped underground, and has made cheaper energy plentiful and widely available, which has been a huge boon to the economy. The Earth has been warming and cooling for millions of years, and the current slight warming does not portend destruction of the earth in eleven years hence, and we can expect it to continue to warm and cool for another millennia. Neither AOC nor Mr. Biden have bothered to study up on the climate situation, but prefer to go along with what they have heard from the Swedish kid, or those who assume that we can run a modern economy on windmills and solar panels. We can’t.  Even Michael Moore has given up on wind and sun, and I believe has a movie out so stating.

There are a lot of very poor countries in the world. We have already had a “Green Revolution”, the late Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution  in a set of technology transfer initiatives  between 1950 and the late 1960s increased agricultural production worldwide, particularly in the developing world. Technologies like high-yielding varieties of cereals, chemical fertilizers, and irrigation, new methods of cultivation including mechanization were adopted as a whole. He received the Noble Peace Prize in 1970 and is credited with saving over a billion people from starvation. But of course there are those who assume that we have too many people in the world already. If you want heroes to extol, remember Norman Borlaug. Banning fracking is just plain silly. Sun and wind energy simply cannot and do not produce the energy needed by a modern society and modern lives.