A few years ago, the Japanese government handed down an edict, that because of the dangers of “climate change” Japan would need to stop running the nation’s vehicles on gasoline (fossil fuels) and switch to running their vehicles on electricity. They shortly discovered that the island nation could not produce enough electricity to power the nation’s vehicles.
They attempted to warn the United States, but we were not particularly interested, but that was before the Biden administration, who were true believers in climate change catastrophe. President Joe Biden believes. That is the reason for dumping the XL pipeline, President Biden is considering moving the nation to electric powered vehicles. He’s even considering running “the Beast”, the presidential vehicle, on electricity. An advisory panel to the president is trying to combine amnesty for illegal immigrants with what they are calling “environmental justice”– the federal effort to confront climate change. Some have tried to suggest that the illegal immigrants trying to cross the Southern border are climate “refugees”.
His White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (savor that one) has released a report with about 90 pages of recommendations which adopt the language of the “Green New Deal” and opposes nuclear energy. So, while they are disposing of petroleum, fossil fuels in general, nuclear energy, and don’t forget that they don’t like nasty dams in pretty rivers either, and certainly don’t want you cutting any timber, so there you are.
Biden had a January executive order which called for 40% of environmental spending to benefit “disadvantaged communities.” The second immigration recommendation suggests that the administration should work aggressively with Congress to secure a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants, as well as other improvements to prevent the undocumented from environmental justice investments since they are predominately Black, indigenous, and people of color. Biden has already backed an immigration bill to grant legal status to up to 20 million illegal immigrants.
Joe Biden’s budget proposal for 2022 includes $1.4 billion for “environmental justice” initiatives. I reject the combination of the word “environmental” and “justice.” Sheer nonsense. There is no climate crisis. And President Biden does not have the public support for the amnesty for illegal aliens that he thinks he does. I suspect that he doesn’t have the support for “environmental justice” either.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Biden Believes, Climate Error, True Believers
I am certainly not a climate scientist, but I do study up and read everything I can to try to understand what is going on.
Lord Christopher Monckton, who was a close advisor to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, wrote a letter to the Lancet on the “Climate Crisis” which the Heartland Institute has made public. He does know what he is talking about. It is not long and very worth your time:
The grave error of physics that created a climate ’emergency’
It was all a big mistake. Concern about dangerous global warming arose from a grave error of physics dating back to 1984. No one had noticed until now because climate scientists had borrowed feedback mathematics from control theory, another branch of physics,without understanding it.The control theorists whose science climatologists had borrowed had not realized how it had been misused. An international team of eminent climatologists and control theorists, gathered by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, spent years hunting the error. Their 70-page scientific paper calculates that, after correcting the error, manmade global warming will be only one-third of what climate scientists had predicted. There will be too little global warming to harm us. Small, slow warming will be a good thing overall. There is no climate emergency. There never was. The trillions wasted on destroying jobs and industries can now be spent on the world’s many real environmental problems. Global warming is not among them. As a result of the error, climate scientists had thought that, though only about 1 C° –a quarter of the global warming they were predicting from doubling the CO2 in the air–came directly from the added CO2, that 1 C° of direct warming would trigger another 3 C° of extra warming, called feedback response, mostly from more water vapour–a greenhouse gas–carried in the air the CO2 had warmed. Fig. 1(a) Erroneous and (b) corrected makeup of the natural greenhouse effect. They had thought the natural greenhouse effect–the difference between the emission temperature at the surface without airborne greenhouse gases and the surface temperature in 1850, at the start of the industrial era–was 32 C°. Of this, they had thought 8 C° was direct warming driven by the pre-industrial green-house gases, to which the remaining 24 C° was feedback response (Fig. 1a). They had made two mistakes, one small, one very large. Their small mistake: they had forgotten that without greenhouse gases in the air there would be no clouds to reflect solar radiation harmlessly back to space, like a mirror. The true emission temperature – the temperature that would prevail at the surface if there were no greenhouse gases in the air at the outset–would be about 12 C° larger than they had calculated. Thus, the true natural greenhouse effect was not 32 C° but 12 C° smaller, at just 20 C°. Their very large mistake:they forgot the Sun was shining. For very nearly all of the pre-industrial feedback response until 1850–the extra warming all of which they thought had been triggered by non-condensing greenhouse gases (gases other than water vapour)–was actually triggered not by those gases but by the Sun’s warmth. In effect, they added that solar feedback response to, and miscounted it as part of, the pre-industrial greenhouse-gas feedback response, which they overstated by 3200%.
The remainder of Monckton’s letter can be found here. It’s not long, but invaluable. Joe Biden is a true believer in the “climate crisis”. He intends to make it his initial issue of prime importance. Billions of dollars worth of wind farms and solar arrays which will not produce the energy required for a modern society. He intends to make John Kerry (John Kerry!) his guru for rejoining the Paris Climate Accords which are meant to allay the nonexistent warming that’s supposed to do us all in. The Earth has been warming and cooling for millions of years, and will probably continue doing so. There are cold winters and mild winters, hot summers and mild summers. We had a vast experiment with a project in the Southern California Desert called Solyndra. An enormous array of solar cells were designed to reflect their heat on a tower that was to produce all the energy needed for a big percentage of California. Cost billions, didn’t work, killed thousands of birds, Enter that name in your search engine and see what comes up.
Japan has just committed to switching to electric automobiles in around 3 years. Mr. Toyoda, president of the Toyota Car Company, spoke out, pointing out that Japan does not have enough electricity to support all electric cars, not even close. We can get in remarkable amounts of trouble by not investigating carefully, or as I usually refer to it as “doing your homework.” It’s not what you know that’s going to get you in trouble, but what you don’t know that you don’t know.
What happens is that we get to imitate California’s reprehensible governor Gavin Newsom, who has been having major problems with power outages and forest fires. California has experimented hugely with wind and solar and learned that they not only don’t work but are remarkably costly. (See Ivanpah) Cost everybody involved enormous sums of money, accomplished nothing, except to kill large numbers of birds. I’m reluctantly coming to the understanding that Democrats just can’t be bothered to study up. They believe their own cherished beliefs, or perhaps just what other Democrats have to say, but they can’t be bothered to study up on the subject. But then, perhaps the reluctance to look things up is why they are Democrats in the first place. So look forward to more forest fires and more blackouts, because that is what Joe Biden’s policies portend.
issuesinsights.com is a fairly new website featuring the writers and editorial folks from Investors Business Daily. Good website. Today, under the headline “Despite What Biden &CO. Say, There is No Such Thing As A Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax”, they wrote:
Joe Biden is a climate change true believer, stating repeatedly human fossil fuel use is undeniably causing catastrophic climate change, which poses an existential threat to human existence. The names Biden has floated for his Cabinet picks and key appointees, such as Janet Yellen for Treasury Secretary, Anthony Blinken as Secretary of State, and former Secretary of State John Kerry as his special envoy on climate, reflects his commitment to imposing drastic policies to fight climate change
As with fanatics, true believers, and zealots throughout history, the fact that data indicate he and his appointees are wrong – climate change, while occurring, is not catastrophic – does nothing to dissuade them from their blind faith that apocalyptic anthropogenic climate change must be stopped at all costs. …
Among the policies Biden and company have embraced for years to fight climate change is taxing carbon dioxide emissions, in short, a carbon tax. Sadly, a number of old mossback, Rockefeller Republicans have also embraced the myth of the carbon dioxide tax. While they profess the carbon tax is a way to fight climate change, in reality it is, as so many policies are, simply another way for elites to accrue more power for themselves, exerting ever greater control over the lives of the common folk — the hoi polloi, Joe and Jane six-pack – whom they disdain.
Why such climate concern does not extend to investigating the science remains a mystery, but being utterly convinced that you are right seems to preclude such a plebeian idea as looking things up. Unfortunate.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economics, Economy, Education, Energy, Environment, Free Markets, Freedom, Global Warming, Junk Science, Media Bias, National Security, Politics, Progressives, Regulation, Science/Technology | Tags: The Climate Problem, The Problem is "Deniers", True Believers
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) announced that she is entering the 2020 presidential race, during a snowstorm, and said that it is a known fact that “climate change is happening”.
Klobuchar said Trump’s tweet that mocked her for talking about climate change while standing in a snowstorm is “so wrong.”
“I’m sorry if it still snows in the world, but the point is that we know climate change is happening,” Klobuchar argued. “Just this last year it was one of the fourth hottest years in the history of the world. That’s what’s happening right now. We see this Greenland ice sheet melting. Look at those wildfires in Colorado and California, where you [have had] a dad trying to get through a fire trying to calm his kid down in a car. That’s what’s happening right now in this country. So that’s why I think we cannot ignore it.”
Well, no, no, no, and your entire statement is completely wrong, Senator. The last year, 2018, was the 6th warmest year in the now–40 year satellite record of lower troposphere temperature variations. 25/100ths of one degree Centigrade warmer.
Senator Schumer believes. He announced that the hurricanes were caused by Global Warming. Jerry Brown said that California’s wildfires, drought, and floods were all caused by Global Warming and he wanted to put up his very own satellite to measure the CO² in the atmosphere so he could be prepared.
The new California governor seems to be ready to pursue the same theme. Our Gov. Jay Inslee tried to prevent fossil fuels from shipping from our ports because of Global Warming. I vaguely remember that some Lefty environmental organization was offering help to Democrat governors, linking them to other governors who faced similar problems, helping to solve them, getting them lots of publicity, that sort of thing, but I cannot remember the details enough to search for an answer.
They have clearly been warned about “the deniers,” obviously conservatives who do not believe in Global Warming, which is the only correct position. They seem to group-believe. Do remember that in early February of 2015, at a news conference in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, the General Secretary of the IPPC, 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.
They don’t care about the environment, it’s a tool in their drive for control. Then, when everyone is truly equal (except for the wise folks who will lead the way) there will be no more rich and poor — you know the rest, you’ve heard it all before. Those others just didn’t do it right. It’s just hard to understand why they believe.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Environment, Global Warming, History, Junk Science, Media Bias, National Security, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear, Politics, Regulation, Science/Technology, The United States | Tags: California Wildfire, Environmental Loons, True Believers
Back in early August, Katy Grimes wrote in the Sacramento Citizen “Last year, as all Hell was breaking loose in California as residents were burned out of their homes, neighborhoods and businesses, Gov. Jerry Brown was jetting around the world spouting climate change propaganda. He’s been calling this California’s ‘new normal.’ Gov. Brown was in Paris to commiserate with other true believers about President Trump’s leaving the Paris Climate Accords.”
Grimes and Megan Barth reported that:
Supporting Obama-era regulations have resulted in the new normal: an endless and devastating fire season. Obama-era regulations introduced excessive layers of bureaucracy that blocked proper forest management and increased environmentalist litigation and costs– a result of far too many radical environmentalists, bureaucrats, Leftist politicians and judicial activists who would rather let forests burn, than let anyone thin out overgrown trees or let professional loggers harvest usable timber left from beetle infestation, or selectively cut timber.
Mismanaged, overcrowded forests provide fuel to historic California wildfires, experts say. The 129 million dead trees throughout California’s forests are serving as matchsticks and kindling.
Jerry Brown, busy mulling ways to prevent the end of the world, took the Clinton and Obama-era gross regulations a step even further when he vetoed a bipartisan wildfire management bill in 2016.
And in this campaign season, we have had billionaire Tom Steyer roaming around the country in his “need to impeach tour” wafting million dollar bills around to get states to sign up for unworkable renewable energy.” Most voters turned him down decisively.
They are “True Believers” – I don’t know what convinces them that the earth is going to die shortly from the perils of global warming, but they certainly don’t read the science, which says with the current lack of sunspots on the sun, we’re in for a colder period. Islands in the Pacific report that the ocean is not rising around their islands. The polar bears are multiplying. I suppose that they just automatically reject any scientist that does not agree with the conventional warmist theme.
But if you pay attention to what the Democrats say, a significant amount of their political belief system seems to fall in the “True Believer” category. And that seems to be what our colleges and universities are turning out—young true believers, and that is downright scary.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Domestic Policy, Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science, Media Bias, Politics, Pop Culture, Progressives, Regulation, The United States | Tags: Bill Nye "The Science Guy", Senator Bernie Sanders, True Believers
This conversation took place about a year ago on Bernie Sanders’ show, featuring Bill Nye, “the science guy” who apparently doesn’t know any. This is perhaps the most vapid, inane, totally empty of thought or meaning conversation I have ever heard.
Science consists of hypotheses that can be tested and the results can be retested by others and come up with the same results. Bill Nye keeps referring to those who do not agree with him as “deniers,”which is just a slur since no one denies that the climate changes. The climate has been changing for millions of years. The climate science that alarmists extol comes out of computer programs, not the real world. And there is no 97% consensus among climate scientists. That has been thoroughly debunked.
James Hansen, former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who Nye cites, wrote a paper in 2008 that claimed his climate models showed that exceeding 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere would have catastrophic effects. We have long since blown past that point, and the result has been the greening of the Earth. CO2 is a natural fertilizer for plants, and the plant growth is feeding a hungry world. Plant nurseries keep their greenhouses at somewhere around 1,000 ppm, and the nurserymen are still healthy. Real world evidence clearly shows Hansen’s theory was wrong.
Bernie Sanders serves on Senate committees on the environment and climate. Bill Nye spoke of the rising sea level, and how it would force the people of New Orleans to abandon their homes, and they would leave behind great coils of wire and pipes. These two gentlemen clearly have no idea what they are talking about, but they care deeply about global warming. A situation that seems to be common on the Left. This level of sheer ignorance should be disturbing.
Filed under: Afghanistan, Africa, Domestic Policy, Environment, Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Terrorism | Tags: Climate Change, German Migrants, True Believers
Perceptions. We’re mostly inclined to believe that other people think pretty much as we do, and are surprised to find out that there are true believers in something radically different. And even when we grasp that they really do believe, and don’t believe that they are wrong, but that you are—it’s still a little hard to get your mind around it. Aside from Maxine Waters, who has now announced that Vice President Pence should also be impeached—(do you think she is just grandstanding for attention, or does she really believe her nonsense?)
Many Americans believe that Europe is well on the way to becoming Islamic. Only 45% of Europeans believe that the massive influx of asylum seekers is a cause for alarm, but 71 percent of Germans listed climate change as their greatest cause of personal concern. Looming less important than fluctuations in the Earth’s climate are things like new wars, the threat of terror attacks, or crime (which 63% fear). Apparently they do not associate the massive influx of asylum seekers, with the rapes and sexual attacks, and terror attacks. Must be a very strong societal emphasis on compassion or empathy going on. Birth rates in Europe are very low as well, and far below a replacement rate.
The results of the study come at a time when Germany is facing an unprecedented Islamist terror threat, with a new report showing that more than half (54 per cent) of plots in the nation have involved asylum seekers and refugees since 2014, and the onset of the migrant crisis.
And on Wednesday it was revealed that the influx of a million migrants in 2015 — who arrived after Chancellor Angela Merkel opened Europe’s borders — has already left a huge mark on Germany’s demographics.
Chancellor Angela Merkel stood out as a credible environmentalist when she attacked Donald Trump for his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement, which scientists largely agreed would have little or no effect on the climate by 2100. A boost for the coming elections.
The study comes at a time when Germany is facing what would seem to be a major terrorist threat. The report shows 54 percent of attacks in the country have involved asylum seekers and refugees, ever since 2014 and the onset of the migrant crisis. Yet they are more frightened by the threat that the climate might get a degree or two warmer. Terror attacks like Manchester or the cases in Sweden don’t seem to bother them, and they are not influenced by the Eastern European countries like Poland and Hungary who are defying the EU demand that they accept asylum seekers. It would seem to us like a major case of denial. It’s hard to understand how differently others can see the world around them.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economics, Economy, Energy, Global Warming, Junk Science, Regulation, Unemployment | Tags: No Net Warming for 20 years, The Global Warming Scam, True Believers
The Left are having a hard time understanding how they lost the election and why it happened. President Obama cannot understand why rural Americans did not turn out for him and his successor since he did so much for them, plowing so much money into rural communities, for green energy. Democrats firmly “believe that they can win back rural voters by ratcheting up their pre-election mission of moving the country from fossil fuels to green energy.”
They are using calls to drastically reduce carbon emission to convince middle-class voters, many of whom voted for Trump, that green energy can provide thousands of jobs to replace those once held by coal workers. Democrat plans to phase out fossil fuels come despite the president-elect’s campaign to restore lost coal jobs.
“This is fundamentally a jobs message,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee told reporters last week in reference to Democrats renewed focus on green energy. “We represent a horizon of job creation that is as great or greater than any other industrial sector.”
Our embarrassingly ineffective governor wants to pass a carbon tax to raise an estimated $2 billion in revenue to pay for education and clean energy projects. Uh huh.
They keep saying that green energy projects create lots of jobs. This is nonsense. Wind farms and solar arrays are made elsewhere, installed by the people who build them, and attended by the people who install them. I haven’t seen a single installation anywhere where they brag about all the new jobs. Washington is blessed with the Columbia River which has many electricity producing dams that already are “clean energy.”
Wind energy is a favorite alternative energy source for advocates of all things green — and we use wind energy as an example of what happens when we deviate from using real science: we end up with high-cost, low-benefit boondoggles. (Much the same could be said about solar.)
The main justification for wind energy by its promoters, is that it will substantially reduce the threat of climate change. Unfortunately this is a political science position, not one based on real Science. No scientific assessment has proven that wind energy saves a consequential amount of CO2 — or that it is a NET societal benefit to us. NET, of course, is the key word.
True believers in global warming are essentially members of a religious cult. They have been told that green energy will save the planet from overheating or something devastating anyway. They are passionate, because what can be more noble than saving the planet. They have installed low flow showers and toilets in their homes to save water, while the government that forced the lousy showers and toilets on them insists that we must beware the rise of the seas which will inundate our coastal cities. Saving water because we’re running out and too much water on the coast does not make sense.
Rural people who farm corn in the Midwest are very much in favor of adding vast quantities of ethanol to your gasoline. It has raised the price of corn significantly. Other than corn farmers, rural people are not apt to be true believers. They spend their days with the climate and understand hot summers and cold winters and cool summers and the lack of snow.They understand when environmentalists bewail the potential endangered species in a certain location that there are apt to be plenty more on the other side of the hill. City people who live in apartments don’t have that daily interaction and are apt to be far more gullible.<
I remember when earlier in President Obama’s first term, he and Michelle were visiting one of the Southern Adirondack resorts, and they went for a walk in the woods—apparently the first time they had done so. That’s not what a Westerner thinks of as “woods.” I think that was the first time I really realized how little city people know of nature, and consequently how little they understand of environmentalists claims.
No, you are not going to win over rural voters with “green energy.”
Currently, most of our energy and environmental policies are NOT Science based. Instead these policies have essentially been written by lobbyists representing clients with economic or political agendas. The predictable result is that almost all of these policies cost taxpayers, businesses, etc. considerably more than originally promised — and accomplish significantly less than we were assured. Additionally, there are usually numerous “unintended consequences” of these lobbyist driven policies that make the net effects even worse.Wind energy is a favorite alternative energy source for advocates of all things green — and we use wind energy as an example of what happens when we deviate from using real science: we end up with high-cost, low-benefit boondoggles. (Much the same could be said about solar.)
The main justification for wind energy by its promoters, is that it will substantially reduce the threat of climate change. Unfortunately this is a political science position, not one based on real Science. No scientific assessment has proven that wind energy saves a consequential amount of CO2 — or that it is a NET societal benefit to us. NET, of course, is the key word.
Democrats, as true believers, are sure that climate change will defeat Donald Trump’s nominees. Mike Pompeo, nominated to the Central Intelligence Agency because of his expertise in intelligence and spycraft, and his mission to defeat terror groups was questioned persistently by Kamala Harris, the new California senator about the scientific consensus on global warming, and asked if he had any reason to doubt NASA’s findings? He responded that he would prefer not to get into the details of the climate debate because the agency’s role is to collect foreign intelligence.
Ben Carson was questioned by Elizabeth Warren who wanted to learn what the doctor thought about CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, because flooding poses “a significant risk to public housing.” She also wanted to know what “other actions will you take to adapt to or prevent climate change while you are HUD Secretary.”
Perhaps they are just practicing up for the day when Scott Pruitt will be grilled about leading the Environmental Protection Agency. They really have it in for him. Patty Murray, our very own Washington State Senator called the Oklahoma Attorney General “a climate change denier.” Jean Shaheen of New Hampshire claimed he was a “capitulation to polluters.”
They keep explaining why they lost the election, and they’re right, but it isn’t exactly what they claim, but what they make evident that they do not understand.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Education, Energy, Entertainment, Environment, Global Warming, History, Junk Science, Law, Politics, Progressivism, The United States, YouTube | Tags: Leftist Propaganda, True Believers, Tucker Carlson
Tucker Carlson just said that this young woman was a candidate for Congress from the State of California. It is fascinating proof that those on the Left believe their own propaganda. They don’t investigate, they don’t attempt to study up and understand the mindset of the opposition. They know—because Leftist propaganda is, to them, infallible.
They do not question their beliefs, and what is “conventional wisdom” is as permanent and infallible for them as any history book or any scientific authority. She truly doesn’t know what Carlson is talking about, and having called Trump ‘Hitler’, his appointee a stooge, among other things, Steve Bannon a white supremacist and an anti-Semite, and accused Trump of hate speech—she doesn’t understand what Carlson means about irony.
This young woman demonstrates complete and utter idiocy. Her beliefs are provably nonsense, and thank heavens that she was not elected to anything. Obama’s legacy of demonizing anyone who disagreed with Democrats as racist, homophobic, sexist, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, racist, transphobic and spouting racist hate speech.
Perhaps that is why, when a Democrat wins the election, Republicans hunker down a little and study up to see where they went wrong, but I can’t ever remember or imagine a conservative response such as we have seen from the Democrats. If there was ever a demonstration, I missed it completely.
Hillary lost because she was a lousy candidate. She has wanted to be the first woman president, but never felt it necessary to build up a record of knowledge and accomplishment that qualified her for office. Her compulsive lying and record of graft in office were more than most could take, but to the left she would be the “first woman president,” and that was enough.
Obama remains personally popular. Nice looking, nice family. But he was an ideologue. For eight years he has encouraged those who demonize Republicans. He had the opportunity as the first black president, to improve race relations in America, instead, he suggested that anyone who disagreed with his policies was racist. He welcomed Black Lives Matter to the White House and urged them on, which has resulted in a horrendous death toll among American police officers.
The outcry among Leftists has been a constant shriek of “Racist, Sexist, Homophobe, Misogynist, Xenophobe, Fascist, Anti-Semite,” and of course the constant “Racist” over and over. It does get a little tiresome. But it is used in the absence of argument. That’s all they have—name-calling. They understand as little of the underlying issues as the unfortunate young woman in the video above.
She has no idea that simply stating “pollution” is not an argument. She called Trump “Hitler,” his appointee for EPA head as a stooge, a “puppet” of the evil oil industry, with no understanding that our civilization relies on the oil industry to provide the power that allows it to operate. Scott Pruitt was the attorney representing 28 states who were suing the federal government and the EPA for unlawful and illegitimate regulations. She had no understanding whatsoever that what she was engaging in was “hate speech” based only on emotion—no facts. There are no such things as “Climate Deniers,” only scientists whose work proves that the climate has been changing for millions of years, there is nothing that man can do to keep it from changing, and we just have to adapt. It is the need for panic that is denied. She has no idea that her proud degree in “Social and Cultural Analysis” left her a little short in the knowledge department.
It’s both a funny and a sad video. Will Democrats catch on and refuse to appear on Tucker Carlson’s show? Or is the chance to appear on national television just too enticing?
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science, National Security, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear, The United States | Tags: Misleading the Nation, Too Many Lies, True Believers
When one starts pondering fads, hype, politics, advertising and lies, you quickly get involved in the environment, from which much of the voluminous bubble of hype flows. We have records of a sort going back over a significant amount of time, from tree rings to ice cores, stalagmites and the careful measurements of sea temperatures of Captains in the British Navy in the 1700s, to landscape paintings during the Renaissance. Of a sort.
We have three systems of measuring heat and cold — Fahrenheit, Celsius and Kelvin, each, I believe, named after the inventor. Most of us are familiar with the Fahrenheit of 20º below zero and the upper ranges of 90º and 100º discomfort, and don’t pay much attention the rest of the time.
Surface temperature records are unreliable because of siting issues, failure to recognize the urban heat island effect, and poor coverage of the oceans — but not so aware of the deliberate falsification of temperature records by alarmist climate scientists who depend on climate alarm for their jobs and federal grants. They constantly revise temperatures recorded in the past to make the past appear cooler to get more warming in the present.
But we now have satellite data that gives accurate global readings, though it only goes back to 1978. That is, however 37 years of satellite data. Anthony Watts summarized the data.
The average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere has warmed just over four tenths of a degree Celsius (almost three fourths of a degree Fahrenheit) during the past 37 years, with the greatest warming over the Arctic Ocean and Australia, said Dr. John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Microwave sounding units on board NOAA and NASA satellites completed 37 complete years of collecting temperature data in November, giving us nearly global coverage of climate change during that time.
If that trend was to continue for another 63 years, the composite warming for the globe would be 1.1 C (about 2 degrees Fahrenheit) for the century, Christy said. That would put the average global temperature change over 100 years well under the 2.0 C (3.6 degrees F) goal set recently at the climate change summit in Paris.
Anthony Watts notes that a “1.2º C. or 2.2º F. is roughly equal to the warming seen most spring days between 10 a.m and noon.” Well, run for the hills, we’re all doomed!
The policies and programs arising from climate alarmism range from organic food, wind farms, solar arrays, and all the costs and features involved (which have always included the promise of vast employment which hasn’t materialized either.) Consider all the programs, regulations and disastrous policies of the EPA, the Energy Department, the Interior Department, and the White House that arise from the belief in catastrophic global warming. We have even been told that we cannot bomb the oil trucks that transport stolen oil for illegal sale by ISIS to support their beheadings and crucifixions—because blowing them up might harm the environment.
Fads, hype, politics and national security lies. I rest my case.
The picture at the top is indeed ISIS tanker trucks being blown up. Unfortunately it is being accomplished by Russian bombers. We are dropping leaflets to warn the drivers to run away because we might drop a bomb.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Election 2012, Health Care, Law, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear | Tags: Congress's Bad Ideas, Obamacare, True Believers
Hundreds of thousands of American physicians and thousands of hospitals that fail to buy and install costly health-care information technologies by the deadline in just two years, will face penalties through reduced Medicare and Medicaid payments. Prescription records and patient histories will be required to be entered.
This mandate was part of the 2009 Stimulus legislation, and a major goal of health-care IT lobbyists and their allies in Congress and the White House. Getting it all computerized so anyone could access the records would make medical administration ever so much more efficient, and lower medical costs by up to $100 billion annually. Doctors have been obediently computerizing, but you will not be surprised that a new study indicates that physician reluctance was justified. The savings are just another myth of ObamaCare.
Since 2009, almost a third of health providers have installed at least some health IT technology. For a major hospital, the full range can cost $150 million to $200 million. But the software is generally not friendly to the user, and inefficient. The claim of savings is mostly hype.
To conduct the study, faculty at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and its programs for assessment of technology in health—and other research centers, including in the U.S.—sifted through almost 36,000 studies of health IT. The studies included information about highly valued computerized alerts—when drugs are prescribed, for instance—to prevent drug interactions and dosage errors. From among those studies the researchers identified 31 that specifically examined the outcomes in light of the technology’s cost-savings claims.
With a few isolated exceptions, the preponderance of evidence shows that the systems had not improved health or saved money. For instance, various studies found the percentage of alerts overridden by doctors—because they knew that the alerted drug interactions were in fact harmless—ranging from 50% to 97%.
The problem seems to be “true believers” in information technology — certain of their goals and unwilling to hear the concerns of skeptics. It will work— because we believe, a philosophy that has made the design of ObamaCare such a mess. There is even a government agency: the Office of the National Coordinator of Healthcare Information Technology, (an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services). File under the Eternal Life of Government Agencies.
It is already common knowledge in the health-care industry that a central component of the proposed health IT system—the ability to share patients’ health records among doctors, hospitals and labs—has largely failed. The industry could not agree on data standards—for instance on how to record blood pressure or list patients’ problems.
Instead of demanding unified standards, the government has largely left it to the vendors, who declined to cooperate, thereby ensuring years of noncommunication and noncoordination. This likely means billions of dollars for unnecessarily repeated tests and procedures, double-dosing patients and avoidable suffering.
Other news among the true believers: The doctor shortage may swell to 130,000. The U.S. health care law’s process for providing insurance subsidies to middle-income families will produce an IRS quagmire. There is no chance the exchanges will get it right. Compliance with ObamaCare is estimated at 80 million man hours per year. It wasn’t intended to be a jobs program and another huge cost. The true believers who are so sure that they know how to arrange the health care for over 300,000,000 Americans need to face up to the facts. They’re not that smart and their ideas don’t work.
Filed under: Environment, Humor, Junk Science | Tags: A Solution, Climate Change, True Believers
Pat Sajak, who I have never quoted before, has the solution to Global Warming. If Kevin Costner and his brother can come up with a method to separate oil and water in drilling rig disasters — and they apparently can— perhaps we should listen to Mr. Sajak. He says:
Manmade global warming, like so many other social and economic issues, has become hopelessly politicized. Each side has dug in its heels and has accused the other of acting irresponsibly and dishonestly. For the believers, the other side has become the equivalent of Holocaust deniers; and for the doubters, the other side has become a cult intent on manipulating mankind to remake the world in some sort of natural Utopian image. (…)
Let’s assume that a third of the world’s population really believes mankind has the power to adjust the Earth’s thermostat through lifestyle decisions. The percentage may be higher or lower, but, for the sake of this exercise, let’s put it at one-third. Now it seems to me these people have a special obligation to change their lives dramatically because they truly believe catastrophe lies ahead if they don’t. The other two-thirds are merely ignorant, so they can hardly be blamed for their actions.
Now, if those True Believers would give up their cars and big homes and truly change the way they live, I can’t imagine that there wouldn’t be some measurable impact on the Earth in just a few short years. I’m not talking about recycling Evian bottles, but truly simplifying their lives. Even if you were, say, a former Vice President, you would give up extra homes and jets and limos. I see communes with organic farms and lives freed from polluting technology.
He does state the problem pretty clearly. So we only have to wait and see how it all turns out. Or wait to see how long it takes for the True Believers to give up?
American Elephants 