Heat wave warms political rhetoric and motivation

 

It’s been a bit warm lately in most of the U.S., and very hot in some places. Another climate crisis is upon us, and we are told to act soon.

Why is it that virtually each and every time an “out-of-the-ordinary” weather event occurs, the climate mania folks cry “It’s the end of humanity if we don’t do radical things immediately?” Too many hurricanes in a year: the end is nearing. Above normal heat and dry conditions: we must stop using fossil fuels.

However, if you look back at the history of catastrophic climate warnings over the last 50-plus years, they were embarrassingly wrong. In this space on June 28th, there were listed seven examples of incorrect predictions of climate doom dating from 1974 through 2018.

Yet, a couple of additional hurricanes, a dry spell, or today’s heat wave sends the eco-mania left into another round of catastrophic predictions of imminent doom

Last week, Fox Business Network’s Larry Kudlow featured theoretical physicist Dr. Steven E. Koonin on his 4:00 p.m. program. Koonin is the author of the bestselling book “Unsettled: What climate science tells us, what it doesn’t, and why it matters.”  His credentials also include being former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University, and he served as Undersecretary for Science in the US Department of Energy under President Barack Obama.

Koonin gets slammed by the pro-climate-catastrophe crowd due to his view that the world is not nearing its end because of CO2 and other climate threats. 

Discussing an official government report from 2018 on the Kudlow program, Koonin said, “The graphs are there; they show warmest temperatures are not greater than they were in 1900, nor are the heatwaves more common than they were in 1900.”

“What we see with heat waves is weather. It happens on time scales or changes of a few days. Heat waves are not going to last more than a few days, either in the US or in Europe. Whereas climate is the many-decade average of weather: temperature, winds, humidity, extreme events, and so on,” he continued. 

“And so, people have a tendency — the news media certainly does — to focus on what happens today. That’s news. But it’s kind of boring to say things have changed by x, y or z over the last 30 years.” 

Kudlow asked, “so what’s the real story here on climate change?” Koonin’s response: “We’ve seen heat — warming — since the 1600s. We had what’s called ‘the Little Ice Age,’ and [Earth’s temperatures have] gone up in the last century, let’s say, by about 2-degrees Fahrenheit. That’s globally averaged. It’s gotten warmer more rapidly in some places, in the poles, for example, and it tends to get warmer in the evening, compared to getting warmer in the daytime. There are changes. Nevertheless, it’s gotten warmer.”

“Now the real question is, are humans going to be able to, or will humans influence the climate enough so that the warming accelerates?”

“I think we understand that greenhouse gases, mostly CO2, exert a warming influence on the climate. Some human activities … exert a cooling influence on the climate. But on balance, we expect human influences to warm the climate somewhat. And the real issue is, how much is it going to warm, and the best estimate now is that it might warm another 2- or 3-degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. And then, of course, what can we do about it?”

So, Koonin, Obama’s former Undersecretary for Science, agrees that warming has occurred, and that it likely will continue to occur, but does not believe that the end of life on Earth as we know it is in the foreseeable future. Therefore, radical alterations are not called for.

Given the catastrophic predictions over the last half-century that were catastrophically wrong, perhaps Koonin’s forecast of the future is more on target.

The U.S. should reduce its burning of fossil fuels as the development of sources that can equal the demand filled by fossil fuels occurs. The U.S. should not try to force ending fossil fuels that the country’s needs, but be sensible enough to recognize that such transitions take time, and rushing the change only hurts the people, with little or no benefit.

Currently, so-called green sources, such as wind and solar, are incapable of not only matching the level of electricity and vehicle fuel currently needed, but also to do that at a cost that is commensurate with the costs — not the current high level — to which American consumers are accustomed.

President Biden and the rest of his administration would be well advised to focus on the immediate serious problems his policies have brought upon the American people. He should undo the restrictions he placed on domestic energy production, address the sky-high inflation under which people are suffering, and stop the ridiculous levels of dangerous illegal entry into the country that his foolish policies have created, for starters.

It was not an accident that the country was in far better shape under the previous administration than now, even with the scourge of Covid. Biden’s focus must be to help the American people, not to help the political left.

Will the far-left stop at nothing to impose its will on the U.S.?

July 19, 2022

We all heard, read and saw news items on the left’s riots in major cities such as Portland; Seattle; New York City; Chicago; Atlanta; Minneapolis; Richmond; Miami; Kenosha; and the District of Columbia during the summer of 2020. 

Government buildings and private property were damaged and burned, businesses were looted and vandalized. Damages reported totaled in the billions of dollars.

The U.S. edition of The Guardian reported that “At least 11 Americans have been killed while participating in political demonstrations this year and another 14 have died in other incidents linked to political unrest, according to new data from a non-profit monitoring political unrest in the United States.”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and his wife were threatened by a mob in Washington, DC following a visit to the White House in August, 2020, and fortunately were protected from injury by DC police.

Yet, little was done to the organizers and participants of these riots, and much of the reporting here at home was, shall we say, carefully worded. To wit: With a fire raging in a building in the background, a TV reporter termed the event “mostly peaceful,” and that was the usual coverage by the highly liberal media outlets, and was also the attitude of other liberals. Indeed, Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris even bailed out rioters who were arrested.

Then this year, a draft of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion dealing with the Roe v. Wade issue, written by Justice Samuel Alito, was leaked to Politico by someone working in the Court, and published last May. 

Taking from the draft opinion indicating that the Court would overturn Roe, the left again rose up. Protests were organized at the homes of some of the constitutional conservatives on the Court. While these protests were noisy and otherwise unpleasant, unlike the “mostly peaceful riots,” they were mostly peaceful.

However, just like the criminal behavior in the cities in 2020, protesting at the home of Supreme Court Justices is against federal law. Section 1507 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code clearly states that it is unlawful to protest near a ‘residence occupied or used by [a] judge, juror, witness, or court officer’ with the intent of influencing ‘the discharge of his duty,’ adding that anyone who ‘uses any sound-truck or similar device or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.’”

Yet, while the justices were being harassed and intimidated, federal law enforcement, the Department of Justice and the head of all of that, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, sat on their hands and did nothing. To selectively enforce federal law is not what Garland is supposed to do.

But, it gets worse. Much worse.

An armed California man was arrested in the early morning hours on June 8th outside the Maryland home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He was carrying a gun, ammunition, a knife, pepper spray, a screwdriver, zip ties, and other gear when he was arrested, not by federal agents protecting Kavanaugh, but by Montgomery County Police Department officers.

Nicholas John Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, California, told police that he was going to kill Kavanaugh because he was upset about the justice’s positions on Roe v. Wade and the Second Amendment.

Fortunately, while the AG and federal law enforcement were sitting on their hands, the local authorities were doing their job. 

More recently, a group of protesters gathered outside an upscale DC restaurant, harassing diners, including Justice Kavanaugh, forcing him and his wife to leave via the back door.

In addition to the Attorney General, other federal officials have done nothing to stop this illegal behavior and protect the justices from intimidation and potential harm.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. “I don’t have an official U.S. government position on where people protest.” She appeared unaware that the U.S. government has a law covering this.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, threatened Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, saying they will “pay the price” for their decisions.

After the Roe decision, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, in an email sent out to people, encouraged them to “RISE UP” against the “far-right extremists” of the Supreme Court.

And now there is this. Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University, wrote the following on his website: “We recently discussed the Georgetown law professor who defended ‘more aggressive’ protests targeting the Supreme Court justices, but Harvard clinical instructor Alejandra Caraballo wants to guarantee that ‘The 6 justices who overturned Roe should never know peace again.’ Accordingly, Caraballo is calling for people to accost them every time they are in public.’” Apparently, she does not understand how the Court works.

Those on the left, whether they be elected or appointed federal officials, federal employees, biased journalists, or people trained in the law, and responsible for properly teaching students about the law, do not care about the law, or right and wrong. All they care about is getting their way, whatever methods are required to accomplish their goal.

What has happened to the concept of integrity and honor in one’s work?

Why do so many young people think America is a bad place?

July 12, 2022

One of the things that bothers many of the seasoned citizens among us is the high degree of discontentment that many in the younger generations feel about their country. Many of us were born and raised in a time when we learned at home, in school, and in church about our country. We learned to appreciate America for the freedoms it provided us that were unmatched anywhere on the planet.

And while we see and know that America is not perfect, and that not all members of those younger generations view their country as a bad place, it is still disturbing to see how many of them think that America is a bad place, and what they imagine would make America better.

They are cheered on and led by older folks, who ought to know better but, sadly, do not.

And then, magically, to make us feel better about this situation, a video by a member of a younger generation appears in an email.

The video is the senior speech by Julie Hartman, delivered in Harvard’s Memorial Chapel on May 3, 2022. 

Her speech begins, “Last Spring Break I went on a trip with a hundred other Harvard graduates to Israel. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. And I will always be grateful to Harvard for that.

“I recall the trip with awe and joy. But a certain moment rattled me” at a dinner her group attended at a Tel Aviv synagogue. “The Rabbi proclaimed, ‘Welcome to Israel. You are all here from America, the best country in the world.’ He paused. But not a single person clapped. The Israelis stared in disbelief.”

Like those of us who really know and understand our country, the Israelis were surprised at the lack of appreciation these youngsters showed.

Harvard grad Hartman then listed some of the things that have occurred that criticized America, and should have received pushback, but didn’t.

* “The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting that the sole purpose of the American Revolution was to preserve slavery. And we remained silent.”

* “The Oregon Department of Education observed that showing your work and finding the right answer in math is white supremacist. And we remained silent.”

* “The American Medical Association has stated that the U.S. should remove gender from birth certificates. And we remained silent.”

* “Howard Zinn, author of the most widely read history text in American public schools, said that America has done “more bad than good.” And we remained silent.”

* “A huge percentage of the donations to the national Black Lives Matter organization have been spent on compensation and benefits, including several extravagant real estate purchases, and questionable consulting contracts. And we remained silent.”

* “On this campus we often hear how oppressive America is. Just outside of this church, there was a sign for Israeli Apartheid Week, of an upside-down faded America flag with painted bullet holes in it. And we remained silent.”

“We must not lie to ourselves, or to one another,” she said, “by denying that a large reason that we remain silent is that we see personal and professional advantages in doing so. We are ashamed to be American? The shame should be on us.”

“The people who excoriate religion live in a society where their freedoms are based on the Bible,” she said. “Many who say that the nuclear family is antiquated grew up in two-parent households. Those who condemn the police as oppressive still summon them when they are in danger. And too many use their right to free speech to advocate suspending it for all who disagree with them.” 

Reiterating that Americans are the freest, most privileged people on Earth, she said: “Yet many of us are ashamed to show any, even the tiniest trace of national pride. Why?”

 And then she explained: “Because we Americans of recent generations have been swaddled in prosperity and security, and in consequence have become ungrateful for the blessings we enjoy. It requires vigorous, athletic imagination for most of us to consider the basic brutal reality that much of the world experiences daily. Even worse, we have consumed a cultural diet that reduces America to its ugliest moments, and dismisses its noble ideals and accomplishments as jingoism.”

“What a litany of dishonesty. We are using our privilege to undermine the very system that has given us that privilege.”

In closing, she noted that despite its problems, America stands alone in its level of individual freedom, and it is therefore the last stronghold of individual freedom. 

“We must speak up against this now or our civilization will face a somber reckoning. As President Reagan said, ‘If not us, who? If not now, when?’” 

How refreshing to hear this message from one of those in the disturbed and oppositional generations. Especially one who attended and graduated from one of the most liberal and anti-American biased institutions in America.

Democrats are upset by recent decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court

“Conservative” justices are not political conservatives. They are Constitutional conservatives, originalists. The conservative view of the Constitution is that it means today and forever what it meant to the Framers when they wrote the Constitution.

Liberal/activist justices do not view the Constitution the same way as the originalists. They see the Constitution as a “living” document, the meaning of which changes with time and our culture.

This essentially means that we don’t really have a Constitution if its meaning can be determined differently at any time, depending upon the views of nine unelected justices.

The late and brilliant Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia had it right: “The Constitution is not a living organism. It’s a legal document, and it says what it says and doesn’t say what it doesn’t say.”

If the principles of the Constitution should ever turn out to be wrong, or hurtful, it can be changed through a process of amending it. But it should not — must not — be ignored or changed with the fickle winds of social “needs” or “wants.” The faithful allegiance of the conservatives/originalists is the great obstacle the left cannot conquer.

What so many do not understand, or prefer to ignore, is that what the Supreme Court did regarding Roe v. Wade was merely to undo a previous wrong action by the Court. It did not deny women a Constitutional right. There is no Constitutional right to abortion. Freedom of speech, religion, and the press, and the right to due process are among those specifically mentioned in the first 10 amendments to the Constitution. But the word “abortion” does not appear in the document, and stretching the meaning of privacy to include abortion was a gross error 49 years ago.

The Court’s action simply returned the decision about if there can be legal abortions and what the rules are regarding abortion to the states, where it belongs.

The concept of federalism, upon which the United States of America is based, holds that the states have certain authority over how they do things, and are not always at the mercy of the federal government. Laws on abortion, if there are such laws, belong in the states, not the federal government.

The radicals among the Democrats and liberals are ready to totally rebuild the United States so that their un-American ideas can become the norm.

They want to do crazy things to shove their ideas down the throats of every American. Such things as:

* Packing the Supreme Court with activist/liberal justices so that they can push their ideas through the legal system 

* Getting rid of the Senate filibuster that protects the rights of the minority so that their majority can easily have its way 

* Making the District of Columbia and/or Puerto Rico a state, so that they will have additional electoral power; 

* And even trashing the Electoral College, which protects the smaller and less populated states against the tyranny of a few states with large populations

These are some of their radical solutions to their inability to convince a majority of Americans to support those ideas.

Two recent decisions by the Court last Thursday provided fodder for more Court criticizing, one on the “Remain in Mexico” policy, and the other on the EPA’s actions.

The latter focuses on the fundamental structure of our government as established in the Constitution. That structure established three branches of government: the legislative, executive and judicial branches. Each one has its specific function, and the Constitution imposes a separation of powers, meaning that each branch must not stray into the given area of another branch.

The legislative branch makes the nation’s laws. The executive branch has the power to enforce or carry out those laws. The judicial branch has the power to apply and interpret the laws.

In recent decades the departments of the executive branch have taken on power, making rules with the power of law. But laws are to be made by the legislative branch, not the executive branch. The EPA ruling puts the brakes on the executive branch’s straying into the legislative branch’s area.

Justice Elena Kagan, in a dissent from the majority opinion, paints a picture of environmental catastrophe if the EPA is not allowed to continue its growing control of things that produce pollution.

Accusing the conservative/originalist justices of making themselves the "decision maker on climate policy," she wrote, "Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change."

Well of course not. The justices are not supposed to know about climate change, or any other such topic. They are supposed to know about and rule on laws and the Constitution.

How wonderful and helpful it would be if people would understand that our government is never going to do only those things that everyone agrees on, because there is little or nothing that everyone agrees on. The government is charged to do things that benefit the people as a whole, not any specific segment.

How nice it would be if we all understood what a wonderful, if imperfect, place America is, and how fortunate we all are to be able to live here.

New book takes a broader, more realistic view of fossil fuel use

June 28, 2022

In his new book, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas — Not Less, Alex Epstein agrees that fossil fuels’ CO2 emissions are impacting our climate, and wrote that “I totally acknowledge that they have contributed to the 1ºC warming we’ve experienced over the last one-hundred-plus years, and they will contribute to further warming going forward.”

However, he contends that “the negative climate impacts of fossil fuels will be far, far outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels,” that their impact “would not be catastrophic but rather continue to be ‘masterable’ by ingenious human beings empowered by fossil-fueled machines.”

The advantages of fossil fuels, he wrote, is that their abundance and relatively low cost make them useful so that eventually they will benefit the billions of people who have little or no access to energy. “Fossil Fuels,” he wrote, are “providing four times more energy than all alternatives combined.”

Because of their low cost and reliability they have transformed our environment into “one that is unnaturally clean and unnaturally safe from climate danger.” And while their use did increase the CO2 level, that would be offset by the fossil-fueled machines that provide benefits, like irrigation equipment that counter drought, air-conditioning machines that help us live in very warm climates, and heating units for cold climates.

While conceding that fossil fuels do contribute CO2 to the environment, he called our attention to the excessive and often flat-out incorrect predictions of gloom and doom that have influenced how we do things.

Grossly incorrect predictions of climate doom have been put forth over the years. Highlighting some of these mistakes in not-too-distant history, Epstein provided examples of trusted news institutions wrongly warning us back in the 1970s:

* The Guardian, in 1974: “Space satellites show new ice age coming fast.”

* Newsweek, in 1975: “The cooling world: Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects.”

* The New York Times, in 1978: “International team of specialists finds no end in sight to 30-year cooling trend in northern hemisphere.”

More recent predictions that are not included in Fossil Future have been just as wrong, and in the opposite direction, promising death and destruction from a warming world.

* In 2004, the U.S. edition of The Guardian reported that the U.S. Defense Department had told President George W. Bush that European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a “Siberian” climate, triggering nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting across the world.

* In 2008, then-presidential candidate Al Gore predicted that within five years the North Polar Ice Cap would be completely free of ice.

* In 2009, Great Britain’s Charles, Prince of Wales, said that capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse, and we have only 96 months to straighten things out.

* In 2014, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, appearing with then-Secretary of State John Kerry, warned that "we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos." 

Even if you are not a senior citizen that has lived through all these false warnings, you probably realize that none of them has come to pass.

In fact, some positive things have occurred. Even though there has been an increase in atmospheric CO2, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. air emissions — including carbon monoxide, ammonia, nitrous oxides, Sulphur dioxide, and particulate matter — have been reduced from 300 million tons in 1970 to approximately 125 million tons in 2020, despite the increased use of fossil fuels.

This is because the currently used fossil fuels are cleaner than those used many years ago such as wood and animal dung, which were often burned indoors, and we have cleaner methods for using them.

Two other energy sources are not used very much: nuclear and hydroelectric, which Epstein says are discouraged because of the harm they do to the environment. But, he noted that the “radiation in the case of nuclear is trivial, and the waste has been safely managed for generations.” And for hydroelectric, arguing against those projects “in the name of free-flowing rivers … is clearly not focused on human flourishing” that it will provide.

Essentially, he suggests that these arguments greatly exaggerate the dangers of nuclear and hydroelectric, and essentially ignore the positive aspects they provide that will benefit humanity. 

What Epstein accomplishes is something not really complicated, but it is something rather rare; instead of taking one side or the other and pushing it, he accepts the strong points of both sides, and presents both of them. He makes the case that ought to be more broadly presented to us; that we must keep at the top of our thinking how we best serve the needs of the billions of people on Earth by making the most of fossil fuels, and in doing that we also manage the negatives of fossil fuels to prevent them from doing serious harm.

Texas Congressman Chip Roy terms this approach a “humanity-centric alternative to the anti-fossil fuel climate hysteria” so prevalent today.