Posted on November 30, 2020 by Kirye
Hi, everyone.
Today, I checked the mean annual temperatures in Bahia Blanca, Argentina from 1880 to 2019.
According to GHCN V3 Unadjusted data, there has been a cooling trend since 1880, while V4 Unadjusted data shows a warming trend.
Man-made Global warming believers don’t know that NASA just likes changing data, despite the many similar cases.
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via Real Climate Science
November 30, 2020 at 12:34PM
The mass hysteria surrounding the Covid pandemic has similarities to climate hysteria, with the difference that it has evolved over a period of months instead of decades, and its effects are immediate instead of hypothetical. The unrolling of events can therefore be observed in real time, with the decisions and behaviour of the main actors visible to us all. A close look at the Covid saga should therefore help us to understand the far more slow-moving and opaque story of catastrophic climate change.
Mike Yeadon has laid out in detail why the second wave does not exist and why there has been no pandemic since June in this article:
Though it concentrates on the issue of false positives with the PCR test, it covers the whole history of the Covid crisis in sufficient detail to permit a layman to raise the question: Why are we where we are? Yeadon is as puzzled as we are and provides a lot of detail that tends to close off the easy answer of incompetence. But if you eliminate incompetence, what are you left with except conspiracy?
There’s only one right way of doing things, but many wrong ones. Hence there are many factors which can lead to incompetence. I’d suggest, for starters: lazy thinking, stupidity, herd mentality and corruption. As an example of lazy thinking, take a current explanation for Boris’s second lockdown: that he will do anything to prevent images of people dying in hospital corridors.
If it’s true, it’s a sufficient reason for declaring him unfit for office. If government policy is really being designed to avoid certain images appearing on the front pages of newspapers, then there’s no hope for us. Government by focus group is a sign of weakness at the best of times. In this case, the idea of wiping 20% off GDP to avoid something that wouldn’t look good on breakfast television is suicidal madness.
“Whatever you do, don’t let the press mention hospital corridors,” Boris whimpered. Gove and Cummings exchanged glances. “Right, Prime Minister. So it’s decided, Tier Three all round.”
Unfortunately, it sounds plausible.
Lazy thinking merges into stupidity at some point. The argument against stupidity as a major factor is that there is a premium on intelligence in a crisis. The British system of government is not fundamentally autocratic, but rather anarchic in an End-of-the-Roman-Republic sort of way, in that anyone is at risk of being stabbed in the back at any time. In a collegial system, where everyone is aiming to shine, the guy with the bright idea should be able to make himself heard. If anyone in government has a bright idea, they’re keeping it to themselves.
Mike Yeadon links in his article to a ten-page briefing paper for MPs which he’s just issued. It’s clear enough for even the thickest of MPs to understand. It should, in a rational world, change minds. It won’t, and stupidity is not a sufficient explanation why not.
Herd mentality is a variation on the same theme, and it is certainly in play here. But in a functioning democracy, herd mentality automatically provokes a reaction, a counter-herd. We are that counter-herd of course, us sceptics, plus Nigel Farage, parts of the popular press, and the shaved headed Hard Right (our bulwark against fascism. Think about it.) The Hard Left, supposedly ready at the drop of a rouble to do Moscow’s bidding and weaken our national resolve, is right behind Boris, urging him on to further insanity (so maybe they are acting at Moscow’s bidding after all) except that they’re joined by the MI5-run hacks at the soft left Guardian, who delight in sneering at Nobel Prize winning scientists who dare question Boris’s scientific consensus. Whatever the motivations of the different factions, their herd is bigger than our herd. And Ofcom ensures that our herd remains unheard.
Incompetence rules, and the normal rules of rational discourse are suspended, which is nothing new to climate sceptics of course. Dr Yeadon is aware that this is not normal. A section of his paper is subtitled: “Government actions have been nothing but peculiar from the very beginning,” and he goes on to list some of their bizarre features: Ofcom guidelines (“…approximates censorship”) the forecasts of a second wave (“… mystifying”) lockdowns (“a fool’s errand”) and:
Acts of Parliament giving the executive a degree of power more suited to a war, and with it, a budget 10 times larger than any previous such emergency … none of these being justified by the situation or by science.
Remember that Dr Yeadon is tempering his language in order to maintain a reputation as a serious person worthy of being listened to. He goes on to discuss the uselessness of mass testing with PCR, and the fact that the “Lighthouse” Labs are using unqualified staff and unsafe procedures to analyse tests, thus depriving official NHS Labs of testing material. Dr Yeadon doesn’t suggest corruption, but there have been enough cases of contracts going to friends and relatives of well-placed people with no relevant experience to be sure that such corruption is rampant. New, untried methods of tackling a new, unknown threat are the moist orifices by which the virus of corruption enters the system. And when billions of pounds are at stake, you can be sure it won’t be eliminated by the disinfecting powers of reason.
Corruption can’t exist without conspiracy. At the very least it involves people in the know tipping off people they can trust about opportunities, with the necessary corollary of backhanders. Once the system is operating, the politicians who set it up have every interest to keep it going. Expect a third wave once we’ve recovered from the second.
The clearest example of conspiracy and corruption I know of is the case of hydroxychloroquine. Cheap, readily available, and tried and tested in multiple circumstances all over the world, it is used as a prophylactic against malaria by hundreds of millions of people, and it seemed to work against Covid. The attempt in France to denigrate Professor Raoult who was using it successfully in Marseille was excessive to the point of absurdity. The paper trashing it published by the Lancet and immediately retracted was an insult to the intelligence. If medical publishing was held to the same safety standards as, say, the food processing industry, the Lancet would be closed down, its papers declared unfit for human consumption, and the editor would be facing a prison sentence.
Big pharmaceutical companies didn’t want hydroxychloroquine, so neither did the medical establishment, nor Ofcom, nor the science and medical journalists, right down to Big Weed and the Flowerpot Men on Hancock’s Half Hour.
Hydroxychloroquine is to the Covid crisis what coal is to the problem of cheap energy faced by developing countries as they try to lift themselves out of poverty. Cheap (because the patent has expired) effective, and simple to use without complex infrastructure, it’s useless to Finance Capitalism that lives by taking a slice off the top of everything that moves.
Coal fumes will choke you if you’re prevented from burning it efficiently by the refusal of the World Bank to finance new plant. And hydroxychloroquine may kill you if you administer ten times the recommended dose. Used properly, both are cheap and efficient. Finance Capitalism doesn’t want things that work and are cheap. It wants a patented vaccine that has to be kept at -70°C, with opportunities for profit all along the logistic chain. It wants wind turbines that produce rent when they produce “free” electricity, and more rent when they don’t.
It’s an oddity of capitalism that it’s not much fun for capitalists when it’s working efficiently. When markets are free and transparent, people compete at making stuff, unemployment is low, and free bargaining keeps wages up and profits within reasonable limits. It’s difficult under these conditions to either live comfortably off unearned income, or make the kind of killing that excites the “vital spirits” that Keynes claimed were necessary to keep capitalism healthy.
It’s hard work digging coal or administering anti-malarial drugs in poor countries. In a slightly different sense, it’s hard work making money investing in these activities. Buying shares in a mining company or giving to a charity that distributes medicines in Africa may be sensible things to do, but they’re not going to get your vital spirits excited. What with readily available recreational drugs and free porn on the internet, it’s getting more and more difficult to excite our vital spirits. Sometimes only the threat of imminent catastrophe will do it.
via Climate Scepticism
November 30, 2020 at 11:57AM
“Oregon’s governor wants to shut off USA’s fuel supplies and tear down our new border wall. Isn’t that what a terrorist would do?”
– Oly
___________
Another snowy day in Oregon: 26F, 32mph:
https://www.mtbachelor.com/the-mountain/webcams/mountain
Oregon’s governor wants to shut off USA’s fuel supplies and tear down our new border wall. Isn’t that what a terrorist would do?
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Further north in Oregon it’s 25F at Timberline, blizzard:
https://www.timberlinelodge.com/conditions
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Chains required Snoqualmie Pass, an hour East of Seattle:
https://images.wsdot.wa.gov/sc/090VC05347.jpg?1606749890461
Snoqualmie Pass stands at an elevation of 3022 feet.
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Steven’s Pass, Washington, is snowier, no chains required:
https://www.wsdot.com/traffic/passes/stevens/default.aspx
https://www.stevenspass.com/the-mountain/mountain-conditions/mountain-cams.aspx
NO GLOBAL WARMING HERE !!
Thanks to Oly for these links
The post No global warming in Washington or Oregon appeared first on Ice Age Now.
via Ice Age Now
November 30, 2020 at 11:54AM
Another new study (Hou et al., 2020) casts even more doubt on the contention that CO2 concentrations are a driver of ocean temperature changes. Sea surface temperatures ranged between 1 and 5°C warmer than today throughout the last glacial period in the western tropical Atlantic.
A Southern Ocean site was analyzed in another 2020 study (Ghadi et al.). Sea surface temperatures averaged 1-2°C during glacials and 4°C during interglacials. Today, with a 410 ppm CO2 concentration, this location has again plummeted to glacial/ice age levels (2°C).
The North Atlantic record shows this warmer-during-glacial-periods phenomenon extends to the Northern Hemisphere. The Tobago Basin was “2.5°C warmer than the modern conditions” from 30 to 10 thousand years ago and the Bonaire Basin was 4-6°C warmer than modern from about 20 to 12 thousand years ago (Reißig et al., 2019).
The warmer-during-glacials phenomenon even extends to the terrestrial landscape. For example, lake temperatures in southern California were 4 to 5°C warmer than today (22 to 23°C versus 18°C) between 30 and 25 thousand years ago (Feakins et al., 2019). Abrupt temperature swings of 10°C occurred in a matter of centuries.
Even in the high latitudes there was greater warmth during the last glacial period than today. The Russian Altai mountains were “about 3°C warmer than today” 43,000 years ago and up to 5.9°C warmer than now 31,000 years ago (Ganyushkin et al., 2018).
The North Slope, Alaska (Arctic) temperatures were “higher here than they are today” 20,000 years ago, when wild horses ate grass year-round in this region. As recently as 9 to 8 thousand years ago, the North Slope was still “2 to 3°C warmer than today” (Kuzmina et al., 2019).
There are many more reconstructions appearing in the scientific literature showing modern temperatures are several degrees colder than they were during the last glacial. None of these paleoclimate records support the claim that CO2 concentrations are the “control knob” for Earth’s climate.
via NoTricksZone
November 30, 2020 at 10:56AM
Junior publishing staff think censorship is part of their job.
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos has sold an estimated 5 million copies. Written by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, it remains at position #13 on Amazon.com’s ‘most read‘ non-fiction list despite being two years old.
In other words, 12 Rules is a bona fide cultural phenomenon. Authored by a grownup, it explores grownup themes. Peterson has now written a sequel, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. This is great news for his publisher, Penguin Random House. Like Hollywood, publishing needs blockbusters – big successes that make up financially for all the books that sell poorly.
But a news story first published by Vice tells us the Canadian office of Penguin Random House is currently staffed by junior people who imagine big-picture business decisions should take into account their emotional responses and political beliefs
The lower ranks of book publishing now include young people who weren’t taught, by our publicly-funded education system, to cherish and defend free speech. Rather, they were taught that perspectives at odds with their own should be labelled hate speech and vigorously suppressed.
During a recent staff meeting, “staff cried and expressed dismay with the publishing giant’s decision” to publish the sequel. According to these people, it isn’t good enough that Penguin Random House also publishes a range of LGBTQ+ voices. Equal opportunity isn’t what they’re after. Somewhere along the way they got the idea that working in publishing is about shutting down voices of which they personally disapprove. Rather than expanding intellectual discourse, they think their mission is to make the world smaller, narrower, more conformist.
But life is about tradeoffs. You want the prestige of working for a publisher that’s a household name? You want employee benefits, such as dental care? You want to feel confident your salary will be deposited in your bank account like clockwork each payday? None of that happens at small, marginal publishers in which the political views of staffers determine business decisions.
There’s nothing stopping employees who feel they should be working for a politically correct publisher from doing so. Penguin Random House needs to wish them well, and politely hold the door for them.
LINKS:
via Big Picture News, Informed Analysis
November 30, 2020 at 09:43AM
This post is about the US at a junction, dramatized by the crisis of a flawed federal election. The change point is also dramatized by dictatorial behavior of elected officials claiming to protect the citizenry from coronavirus. As explained below, there are in principle two ways of organizing a society: a market based on free choices by individuals, or a jungle where the powerful decide and the weak conform. The US was conceived and operated for 2 centuries upon the market paradigm, but is now facing an activist minority seeking to overthrow that model in favor of autocracy in the form of one-party rule.
Many people have heard of Jordan Peterson due to his battles against post modernism and progressive social justice warfare. Bruce Pardy is another outspoken Canadian professor, belonging to the Faculty of Law, Queen’s College, Kingston, Ontario. This post will provide excerpts from several of Pardy’s writings to give readers access to his worldview and its usefulness making sense of current socio-political actions, and the US on the brink of a socio-political revolution.
In 2009 Pardy wrote Climate Change Charades: False Environmental Pretences of Statist Energy Governance
The Abstract:
Climate change is a poor justification for energy statism, which consists of centralized government administration of energy supplies, sources, prices, generating facilities, production and conservation. Statist energy governance produces climate change charades: government actions taken in the name of climate change that bear little relationship to the nature of the problem. Such actions include incremental, unilateral steps to reduce domestic carbon emissions to arbitrary levels, and attempts to choose winners and losers in future technology, using public money to subsidize ineffective investments. These proffered solutions are counter-productive. Governments abdicate their responsibility to govern energy in a manner that is consistent with domestic legal norms and competitive markets, and make the development of environmental solutions less likely rather than more so.
Pardy also spoke out in support of Peterson and against the Canadian government legislation proscribing private speech between individuals. His article in National Post was Meet the new ‘human rights’ — where you are forced by law to use ‘reasonable’ pronouns
Human rights were conceived to liberate. They protected people from an oppressive state. Their purpose was to prevent arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, and censorship, by placing restraints on government. The state’s capacity to accommodate these “negative rights” was unlimited, since they required only that people be left alone.
If only arm twisting were prohbited beyond the ring.
But freedom from interference is so 20th century. Modern human rights entitle. We are in the middle of a culture war, and human rights have become a weapon to normalize social justice values and to delegitimize competing beliefs. These rights are applied against other people to limit their liberties.
Freedom of expression is a traditional, negative human right. When the state manages expression, it threatens to control what we think. Forced speech is the most extreme infringement of free speech. It puts words in the mouths of citizens and threatens to punish them if they do not comply. When speech is merely restricted, you can at least keep your thoughts to yourself. Compelled speech makes people say things with which they disagree.
Some senators expressed the view that forcing the use of non-gendered pronouns was reasonable because calling someone by their preferred pronoun is a reasonable thing to do. That position reflects a profound misunderstanding of the role of expression in a free society. The question is not whether required speech is “reasonable” speech. If a statute required people to say “hello,” “please” and “thank you,” that statute would be tyrannical, not because “hello,” “please” and “thank you” aren’t reasonable things to say, but because the state has dictated the content of private conversation.
Traditional negative human rights give people the freedom to portray themselves as they wish without fearing violence or retribution from others. Everyone can exercise such rights without limiting the rights of others. Not so the new human rights. Did you expect to decide your own words and attitudes? If so, human rights are not your friend.
These positions derive from bedrock reasoning by Pardy on the foundations of law and legitimacy. An insight into his thinking is his rebuttal of a critic The Only Legitimate Rule: A Reply to MacLean’s Critique of Ecolawgic Dalhousie Law Journal, Spring 2017
Ecosystem as One model of Society
An ecosystem is not a thing. It does not exist as a concrete entity. “Ecosystem” is a label for the dynamics that result when organisms interact with each other and their environment. Those dynamics occur in infinite variation, but always reflect the same logic:
Competition for scarce resources leads to natural selection, where those organisms better adapted to ecosystem conditions survive and reproduce, leading to evolutionary change. All participants are equally subject to their forces; systems do not play favourites.
In ecosystems, the use of the word “autonomy” does not mean legally enforced liberty but the reverse: no externally imposed rules govern behaviour. In ecosystems unmanaged by people, organisms can succeed or fail, live or die, as their genetically determined physiology and behaviour allow. Every life feeds on the death of others, whether animal or plant, and those better adapted to their circumstances survive to reproduce. Organisms can do anything that their genes dictate, and their success or failure is the consequence that fuels evolution.
When an antelope is chased by a lion and plunges into a river to escape, that action allows the antelope to survive and thus to reproduce. The offspring may carry a genetic disposition to run into water when chased by predators. There are no committees of either antelopes or humans deciding how antelopes will behave. Autonomy in ecosystems is not a human creation. It is not based upon human history or culture and is not a human preference.
Market as a Different Model of Society
A market is not a thing either. Nor is it a place. Markets, like ecosystems, do not exist as concrete entities. “Market” is a label for the dynamics that result when people exchange with each other. Bargains may be commercial in nature, where things are bought and sold, but they also occur in other facets of life. For example, in Ecolawgic I suggested that marriage is a kind of exchange that is made when people perceive themselves better off to enter into the bargain than not to.
As I said in Ecolawgic, “Laws and governments can make markets more stable and efficient, such as by enforcing contracts and creating a supply of money, but they create neither the activity of trading nor the market dynamics that the transactions create.” A market is not a place or a legal structure but the dynamics of a collection of transactions. It does not exist before or independently of the transactions within it. The transactions make the market. Transactions are not created by governments but by the parties who enter into them.
People transact whether they are facilitated by governments or not. The evidence is everywhere. If it were not so, human beings would not have bartered long before there were governments to create money and enforce contracts. During Prohibition, no alcohol would have been produced and sold. Citizens of the Soviet Union would not have exchanged goods. Today there would be no drug trade, no black market and no smuggling. Cigarettes would not be used as currency inside jails. People would not date, hold garage sales or trade hockey cards. There would be no Bitcoin or barter. Try prohibiting people from transacting and see that they will transact anyway. They will do so because they perceive themselves as better off. Sometimes the benefit is concrete and sometimes it is ethereal. The perception of benefit is personal and subjective.
Ecosystems are Coercive, Markets are Voluntary
Ecosystems and markets share many features but they differ in one important respect. Violence plays an important role in ecosystems but is not a part of voluntary market exchange. Ecosystems are arenas for mortal combat. Lions eat antelopes if they can catch them. Nothing prevents taking a dead antelope from a lion except the lion’s response. There are no restrictions on survival strategies, and organisms do not respect the interests, habitats or lives of other organisms.
Markets, in contrast, proceed upon the judgment of the transacting parties that they are better off to trade than to fight. The hunter did not shoot the woodworker to get chairs, and the woodworker traded for meat instead of stealing it. They chose to trade because it made them better off than fighting. The reasons are their own. Perhaps they were friends, colleagues or allies. Perhaps they believed that harming other people is wrong. Perhaps they hoped to have an ongoing trading relationship. Perhaps fighting carried risks that were too high and they feared injury or retribution. Perhaps trading was less work than fighting.
For whatever reason, they chose to trade. This choice is not universal. People have traded throughout human history, but they have also fought. I do not maintain that trading is any more “natural” or inbred than fighting, but neither is it is less so. When people choose to fight, they are no longer part of a market. Markets are like ecosystems with the violence removed. They are the kinder, gentler version of ecosystems.
There are only two models for legal governance and only one legitimate rule.
The logic is as follows:
1. In the wild, organisms compete for scarce resources. Those organisms better adapted to conditions survive and reproduce. Their interactions constitute ecosystems. No legal rules govern behaviour and might is right.
2. Human beings trade spontaneously. Parties enter into transactions when they perceive themselves as better off to trade than to fight. Their transactions constitute markets.
3. Moral values and policy goals are preferences whose inherent validity cannot be established. They are turtles all the way down. Therefore laws based upon those preferences lack legitimacy.
4. When governments use might to impose laws and policies that are illegitimate, they unintentionally imitate ecosystems, where might is right. Political constituencies use whatever means necessary to impose their preferences, and their opponents use whatever means necessary to resist. They are “autonomous” in the ecosystem sense: there are no inherently valid restrictions on behaviour. The result is a social order of division and conflict.
5. The alternative is to model human governance on the other system that exists independently of state preference: markets. If the model for human governance is markets, interactions between people are voluntary. People are “autonomous” in the market sense: they may pursue their own interests without coercion. Instead of imposing illegitimate rules and policies, the state uses force only to prohibit people from imposing force on each other. A plethora of sub-rules follow as corollaries of the rule against coercion: property, consent, criminal offences that punish violence and so on.
6. There is no third choice. Coercion is not right or wrong depending upon the goals being pursued since those goals are merely preferences. Their advocates cannot establish that their goals have inherent validity to those who do not agree. Therefore, giving priority to those objectives is to assert that might is right. If might is right, we are back to ecosystems, where any and all actions are legitimate.
7. If might is right, anything goes, and the model is ecosystems. If might is not right, force is prohibited, and the model is markets. Choose one and all else follows.
When I claim that a prohibition on force is the only legitimate rule, I mean the only substantive rule to govern relations between competent adults. No doubt the administration of a legal system, even a minimalist one, would require other kinds of laws to function. Constitutional rules, court administration, the conduct of elections and procedures to bring legal proceedings are a few of the other categories that would be necessary in order to give effect to the general rule.
No Property, No Market
But the existence of property rights must follow from a general rule prohibiting coercion. If it does not, the general rule is not what it purports to be. When people trade, they recognize the property interest held by the other party. It is that interest that they wish to obtain. When the woodworker trades chairs for the hunter’s meat, she trades “her” chairs for “his” meat. The trade would not occur without a mutual understanding of the possession that both hold over their respective stuff.
Sometimes those interests are recognized and protected by the law, which according to Bentham created the property. However, since markets arise even where no property is legally recognized, the notion of property must be prior to the law. Above I gave examples of markets that have arisen where no legal regime has protected property rights: prehistorical trade, alcohol sales during Prohibition, black markets in the Soviet Union, the modern day drug trade, smuggling of illicit goods, and the internal markets of prisons. Since trading occurs even in the absence of an approving legal regime, the notion of property must exist independently as well.
No Consent, No Market
Autonomy in the market sense means to be able to pursue your own interests and control your own choices without coercion. Consent is part and parcel of autonomy. Without the ability to consent, no trades can be made. Without trades, no markets exist. If one cannot consent to be touched, to give up property, to make bargains, to mate, to arm wrestle, to trade chairs for meat, to sell labour for money, and so on, then one is not autonomous.
If force is prohibited, then corollaries are laws that protect people from having force imposed upon them. Laws apply the force of the state to prevent or punish the application of force. A criminal law that prohibits assault is an extension of the general rule. A tax to finance the police department is legitimate if its purpose is to investigate and prosecute violent crimes. Traffic laws prevent people from running each other over. Civil liability compensates for physical injuries caused by the force of others.
Illegitimate Laws, No Market
Illegitimate laws use state coercion to seek other ends such as enforcing moral standards, pursuing social goals or saving people from themselves. A criminal law that prohibits the use of drugs uses state force to prevent an activity in which there is no coercion. A tax to fund the armed forces to protect the peace may be legitimate, but one to take wealth from Peter to give to Paul is not. The legal regimes of modern administrative states consist largely of instrumentalist laws and policies that are inconsistent with the general rule, including tax laws, economic development programs, bankruptcy, patent regimes, mandatory government-run pension plans and MacLean’s version of environmental regulation, in which each decision turns on a political determination of the values to be applied.
It is either ecosystems or markets. Either might is right or it is not. If it is, then human society is subject to the law of the jungle where people are at liberty to fight like animals if they choose to do so. If it is not, then human society is a marketplace where people may enter into transactions voluntarily and the state may justifiably use force only to prevent or punish the application of force.
There is no third choice. Some might insist that coercion is not categorically wrong but that it can be right or wrong depending upon the other goals to be pursued. Those goals are merely preferences. They are
turtles all the way down. I do not maintain that other rules will not be passed and enforced using the established machinery of government but only that they have no claim to legitimacy, any more than other rules that might have been chosen instead. If force is used to pursue those preferences, why would others not use force to resist? Such a choice results in a free-for-all. If state force is right only because it cannot be resisted, that means that might is right. The administrative welfare state prevails not because it is justified morally or socially but because it has managed to secure a monopoly on violence. The imposition of government preferences is an invitation to those opposed to an arbitrary policy agenda to take up force against it.
Summary
In a way, Pardy is warning us not to take for granted the free market social democracies to which we were accustomed. Post modern progressive social justice warriors have decided that society is essentially an endless power struggle, that one group’s rights are gained only at the expense of another group. In other words, it’s a dog-eat-dog, might makes right ecosystem. Pardy says there is another way, which has been the basis for the rise of civilization, but can be reversed by governance that destroys the free market of ideas and efforts by imposing values favored by the rich and powerful.
Footnote about Turtles. Pardy explains the metaphor:
In Rapanos v. United States, Justice Antonin Scalia offered a version of the traditional tale of how the Earth is carried on the backs of animals. In this version of the story, an Eastern guru affirms that the earth is supported on the back of a tiger. When asked what supports the tiger, he says it stands upon an elephant; and when asked what supports the elephant he says it is a giant turtle. When asked, finally, what supports the giant turtle, he is briefly taken aback, but quickly replies “Ah, after that it is turtles all the way down.”
Let the Paris climate deal die. It was never good for anything, anyway
Opinion: Paris is a climate fairy tale. It has always been more about money and politics than the environment. Excerpts below with my bolds.
Paris is more a movement than a legal framework. It imagines the world as a global community working in solidarity on a common problem, making sacrifices in the common good, reducing inequality and transcending the negative effects of market forces. In this fable, climate change is a catalyst for revolution. It is the monster created by capitalism that will turn on its creator and bring the market system to the end of its natural life. A new social order will emerge in which market value no longer determines economic decisions. Governments will exercise influence over economic behaviour by imposing “market-based mechanisms” such as carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems. Enlightened leaders will direct energy use based upon social justice values and community needs. An international culture will unite peoples in a cause that transcends their national interests, giving way to the next stage of human society. Between the lines of the formal text, the Paris agreement reads like a socialist nightmare.
The regime attempts to establish an escalating global norm that requires continual updating, planning and negotiation. To adhere, governments are to supervise, regulate and tax the energy use and behaviour of their citizens (for example, the Trudeau government’s insistence that all provinces impose a carbon tax or the equivalent, to escalate over time.) Yet for all of the domestic action it legitimizes, Paris does not actually require it. Like the US$100-billion pledge, reduction targets are outside the formal Paris agreement. They are voluntary; neither binding nor enforceable. Other countries have condemned Trump’s withdrawal and reaffirmed their commitment to Paris but many of them, including Canada, are not on track to meet even their initial promises. Global emissions are rising again.
If human action is not causing the climate to change, Paris is irrelevant. If it is, then Paris is an obstacle to actual solutions. If there is a crisis, it will be solved when someone develops a low-carbon energy source as useful and cheap as fossil fuels. A transition will then occur without government interventions and international declarations. Until then, Paris will fix nothing. It serves interests that have little to do with atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Will America’s repudiation result in its eventual demise? One can hope.
via Science Matters
November 30, 2020 at 08:40AM
An incredible amount of snow encased Russia’s central federal subject of Krasnoyarskiy Kray (Krai) in an icy tomb Sunday, November 29.
“Mountains of snow” were reported in towns and cities across the vast Siberian district, including in its administrative center of Krasnoyarsk.
The below 2:28 minute report from START on YouTube sums up the scenes:
The below footage comes from Nature News on YouTube.
It was shot in Talnakh (aka Norilsk) –a small town located at the foot of the Putoran Mountains in Taymyr Peninsula, Krasnoyarsk Kray– and shows cars, and in some cases even buildings, buried under 10-foot+ drifts:
Next is a video posted by Norilsk local olga_zapsever on Instagram:
And finally, below are four additional images of Norilsk’s Sunday snowstorm, courtesy of a gallery created by @WeatherSarov1 on Twitter:
The MSM were all-too keen to report on Russia’s anomalous summer heat earlier in the year. Well, now let’s put that “impartiality” they routinely brag about to the test — let’s see if they document the transcontinental nation’s truly jaw-dropping,early-season, and no doubt record-breaking snowfall.
Rusya’da inanılmaz boyutta kar yağışı.
Rusya’nın #Norilsk #Talnakh #Krasnoyarskiykray bölgesinde günlerdir yağan kar, ciddi miktarda kar birikintisine sebep oldu. pic.twitter.com/7SgFoYZdJ5— FORUM ATMOSFER (@forumatmosfer) November 29, 2020
The COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are REFREEZING in line with historically low solar activity, cloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a meridional jet stream flow.
Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.
Furthermore, we can’t ignore the slew of new scientific papers stating the immense impact The Beaufort Gyre could have on the Gulf Stream, and therefore the climate overall.
Prepare accordingly— learn the facts, relocate if need be, and grow your own.
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Grand Solar Minimum + Pole Shift
The post Jaw-dropping Snowfall buries Towns and Cities across Krasnoyarskiy Kray, Russia appeared first on Electroverse.
via Electroverse
Scottish offshore wind project [image credit : urbanrealm.com]
Billed as ‘A bright future for Levenmouth’, the claim that switching to hydrogen could ‘save energy customers across Britain billions of pounds’ looks rose-tinted to say the least. Maybe it’s easy to get carried away when you imagine you’re going to save the world, or something.
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Fife has leapt closer to launching the world’s first 100% green hydrogen network with the announcement of an £18 million funding boost, reports The Courier.
Three hundred homes across Levenmouth will be connected to the network, with residents becoming the first in the world to use zero carbon hydrogen for heating and cooking.
Householders will be invited to get involved in the four to five year trial from late next year.
Energy regulator Ofgem has awarded funding to gas network company SGN to build its H100 Fife hydrogen demonstration project at the energy park in Methil.
The trial has been hailed as a revolutionary, with the potential to cut carbon emissions while improving the Fife economy.
It will see the initial 300 customers given a free hydrogen connection, free replacement hydrogen appliances and free maintenance over the length of the project.
SGN said the hydrogen appliances would connect to the existing pipes for zero carbon cooking and heating.
New hydrogen-ready boilers will be provided but there will be no need to replace radiators or plumbing and households will pay the same as for natural gas.
The project aims to demonstrate how renewable energy produced by offshore wind can generate a secure and reliable supply of green hydrogen to heat homes.
If successful, homes and businesses across the UK could eventually receive hydrogen heating via 170,000 miles of pipes.
Full report here.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
November 30, 2020 at 05:00AM
The next few months will show whether the incoming Biden administration will get its way and rejoin the Paris climate accord as promised, or whether the outgoing Trump administration will try to prevent this from happening.
Ever since he ran for President, Donald Trump made leaving the Paris agreement a key part of his election platform in 2016, arguing that withdrawing from the accord would help to revitalise the US economy with booming energy production, turning the USA into the world’s leading energy superpower.
Trump’s rejection of the Paris agreement was based on his view that it was extremely unfair to the US, allowing rising Asian superpowers, in particular China, to use cheap fossil fuels to make Chinese manufacturing much more competitive and to increase its energy investments around the world, while the US was forced to curtail using its abundant cheap energy resources, while becoming the main contributor to the $100 billion annual green fund which is part of the Paris agreement.
President Trump announced the withdrawal back in June 2017, but the Obama administration had made sure that the US couldn’t withdraw that easily. It took more than three year for that to happen. On 4 November, one day after the US Presidential elections, the US formally withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. The delay was due to the hurdles that were intentionally built into the Paris agreement to minimise the possibility that a future US president would decide to withdraw the US from the deal – just as Republican-lead US Senate leaders promised.
Now, of course, Joe Biden has promised would reverse the reversal, announcing that his incoming administration will re-join the Paris agreement, most likely on 20 January 2021, the same day he takes office.
This widely predicted development has caused an angry response by President Trump. During the recent G20 meeting of world leaders Trump repeated his key reasons for pulling out of the UN climate agreement.
Yet, Trump has only himself to blame for a situation whereby a simple letter by President Biden to the UN can undo what he decided by the stroke of a pen. By failing to submit the Paris agreement to the US Senate for ratification or likely rejection, he has enabled the new US administration to rejoin the climate accord in the same way he withdrew, simply by sending a letter to the UN.
Now, the Wall Street Journal has published a call for Donald Trump to use his remaining time in office to finally send the Paris Accord to the US Senate.
Joe Biden has promised to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord on day one, but President Trump could stop it from having any binding legal power.
President Obama signed on to the international agreement by executive action in 2015, which meant Mr. Trump could withdraw from it the same way, as he did in 2017. As per the terms of the accord, that withdrawal became effective on Nov. 4, 2020. Mr. Obama’s pledge to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions at least 26% by 2025 wasn’t legally binding. Only Senate consent to its ratification could have made it so—and the upper chamber would have rejected the treaty handily if Mr. Obama had submitted it.
Yet if Mr. Biden brought the U.S. back into the accord, it’s possible it will take on the weight of law. Although there is nothing about the agreement’s terms or the manner in which the U.S. entered it that make it legally binding on the U.S., some green group may find a friendly federal court to produce that result.
Example: Mr. Trump rescinded Mr. Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program, yet it remains in place. Although DACA was both created and reversed by executive action, the Supreme Court blocked its rescission in June on grounds that the Trump administration’s decision was “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedures Act. The court’s rationale was procedural; the justices didn’t deny that the president can reverse a predecessor’s executive action. But creative lawyers and judges can find ways of blocking a new president from changing policies, with Congress never having a say.
To prevent the Paris Climate Accord from taking on such undue power, Mr. Trump should submit it to the Senate, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should schedule a quick vote. It would certainly be rejected—ratification requires a two-thirds vote—and it is unlikely any court could subsequently resurrect a legislatively tossed treaty. Without the help of judges, Mr. Biden would need a winning ratification vote to make the accord binding, which he likely couldn’t get no matter how well Democrats do in Georgia’s January runoffs and the 2022 midterm elections.
The next few months will show whether the incoming Biden administration will get its way and rejoin the Paris climate accord, or whether the outgoing Trump administration will try to prevent this from happening.
The post Will Trump send the Paris Agreement to the US Senate? appeared first on The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).
via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
November 30, 2020 at 04:56AM
