Biden's Fascistic EV Edict
David Harsanyi writing below knows his history: That Fascism was Leftist. In the 1920s Mussolini was a prominent Marxist intellectual. It is only Soviet disinformation that has propagated the myth that Fascism was Rightist
President Joe Biden is set to "transform" and "remake" the entire auto industry -- "first with carrots, now with sticks" -- notes the Washington Post, as if dictating the output of a major industry is within the governing purview of the executive branch. The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing draconian emissions limits for vehicles, ensuring that 67% of all new passenger cars and trucks produced within nine years will be electric. This is state coercion. It is undemocratic. We are not governed; we are managed.
In fascist economies, a powerful centralized state -- often led by a demagogue who plays on the nationalistic impulses of people -- controls both manufacturing and commerce and dictates prices and wages for the "common good." Any unpatriotic excessive profits are captured by the state. All economic activity must meet state approval. And crony, rent-seeking companies are willing participants. Now, I'm not saying we already live in a fascist economic state. I'm just saying the Democratic Party economic platform sounds like it wishes we were.
The coverage of Biden's edict has gone exactly as one might expect. "Biden makes huge push for electric vehicles. Is America ready?" asks Politico, for instance. The conceit of so much modern media coverage rests on the assumption that the left's ideas are part of an inevitable societal evolution toward enlightenment. The only question remaining is when will the slaw-jawed yokels in Indiana and Texas finally catch on.
I'm sorry, EVs are not a technological advancement -- or much of an environmental one -- over vehicles with internal combustion engines. Most of the comforts EV makers like to brag about have been a regular feature of gas-powered cars for decades. At best, EVs are a lateral technology. And, as far as practicality, cost and comfort go, they're a regression. If EVs are more efficient and save us money, as administration officials claim, manufacturers would not have to be compelled and bribed into producing them.
The problem for Democrats is that consumers already have perfectly useful and affordable gas-powered cars that, until recently, could be cheaply fueled and driven long distances without stopping for long periods of time. Fossil fuels -- also the predominant energy source used to power electric cars -- are the most efficient, affordable, portable and useful form of energy. We have a vast supply of it. In recent years, we've become the world's largest oil producer. There are tens of billions of easily accessible barrels of fossil fuels here at home and vast amounts around the world. By the time we run out, if ever, we will have invented far better ways to move vehicles than plugging an EV battery -- which is made by emitting twice as many gases into the air as a traditional car engine -- into an antiquated windmill.
"I want to let everybody know that this EPA is committed to protecting the health and well-being of every single person on this planet," the EPA's Michael Regan explained when announcing the edicts. No one is safer in an EV than a gas-powered vehicle. The authoritarian's justification for economic control is almost always "safety." But the entire "safety" claim is tethered to the perpetually disproven theory that our society can't safely -- and relatively cheaply -- adapt to slight changes in climate. If the state can regulate "greenhouse gases" as an existential threat, it has the unfettered power to regulate virtually the entire economy. This is why politicians treat every hurricane, tornado and flood as an apocalyptic event. But in almost every quantifiable way, the climate is less dangerous to mankind now than it has ever been. And the more they try to scare us, the less people care.
So let the Chinese communists worry about keeping their population "safe." Let's keep this one innovative, open and free.
https://townhall.com/columnists/davidharsanyi/2023/04/14/bidens-fascistic-ev-edict-n2621942
**********************************************************Population Bomb' Morphing Into Population Decline: There is no reasoning with the doom-and-gloom ecofascists
There are many alternate religions created by secular leftism. For example, you have the gender ideology cult, the critical race theorists, and the pro-abortion group. But perhaps the most pagan of secular leftism's alternate religions are the climate activists, specifically the climate doom-and-gloomers who have resigned themselves to the end of humanity's existence.
As this writer has pointed out before, end-of-the-world climate cultists have been around for a very long time. Not a single one of their predictions have come true.
One of the most famous theories was posited by Paul Ehrlich, writer of The Population Bomb. He suggested in his infamous book that overpopulation was a clear and present danger for the world. In other words, people are the pollution. This is a patently absurd stance since it is the new and younger generation that takes up the mantle, develops new things, and continues to build society. The birth decline we are seeing all over the world, but particularly in the United States, will cause the economy to take a hit.
Yet the supposed dangers of overpopulation have been so embedded in the American psyche "that people with large families are guilt-tripped on a routine basis," according to political analyst Robert Spencer. "The population explosion myth became the basis for many of the Left's other favored agendas, including the 'climate crisis,' the bug-eating plan, and even the sexual revolution, which was in large part made possible by the contraception and abortion that we were told had to be readily available in order to try to bring the world's population under control."
However, this climate-induced hysteria directed toward reproduction of the human species has taken an interesting twist.
In a study financed by a group called Club of Rome and carried out by a group called Earth4All, the findings suggest that the world population will peak at 8.8 billion and then rapidly decline. This sounds like a debunking of the "population bomb" myth; however, when you read further, the machinations become more sinister.
According to The Guardian, "The peak could come earlier still if governments take progressive steps to raise average incomes and education levels." What on earth could that mean?
Communism. It means communism. The writers of the study even tell us so.
One of the Earth4All study authors, Ben Callegari, said of the results: "This gives us evidence to believe the population bomb won't go off, but we still face significant challenges from an environmental perspective. We need a lot of effort to address the current development paradigm of overconsumption and overproduction, which are bigger problems than population."
An article in New Scientist declares that this Earth4All study prediction could be escalated by "reducing inequity." This government-facilitated (read: communist) redistribution of goods and services could accelerate the population decline to six billion. The writers of this article seem to be issuing a warning, but they also seem to be completely fine with the Maoist-style communist ideology that is driving this new study.
So, to paraphrase writer James Lindsay, the debunking of the population bomb with this study is merely a premise to explain why communism is the way of the future (or the manifesto of the Marxist Death Cult). The study writers and the New Scientist writers demand that everyone makes environmentally friendly changes so that perhaps the decline won't be so bad.
Sound familiar? It's just another way of manipulating gullible people down the path of the pagan sun monster hysteria, threatening that unless you give them more power, more control, and more obedience, the world will end, and it's your fault.
This communistic taint is infecting everything and should keep us on our guard.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/96482-population-bomb-morphing-into-population-decline-2023-04-14
******************************************************Straw Ban Arguments
A few years ago, a moral panic spread across the globe as governments, companies, and right-minded celebrities united to banish plastic straws from respectable society. The impetus for the crusade came after a decade of data about the imminent environmental dangers of single-use plastic. Most of all, however, one peculiarly specific number inflamed the activist imagination, a single statistic lodging itself deep in the conservationist’s bleeding heart: 500 million plastic straws are used in the United States every day.
But a movement cannot live on numbers alone. And into this minefield of climate alarmism, fate tossed a tortoise, when marine biologist Christine Figgener uploaded an amateur video of a maimed sea turtle in Costa Rica with a plastic straw stuck in its nose. Every crusade needs a martyr. 39 million views later the straw movement had its poster turtle.
Society’s shapeless eco-panic consolidated around a tangible villain: the single-use straw—and concerned citizens around the globe answered the call to arms. First came the nonprofits as snappy, single-issue campaigns started popping up around the web: The Last Plastic Straw, For a Strawless Ocean, Our Last Straw, and Straw Wars. Entourage star Adrian Grenier launched the Lonely Whale nonprofit which led to the “Strawless in Seattle” initiative, and the Surfrider Foundation dubbed 2018 “the year we say goodbye to plastic straws.” Then the TED Talk phase arrived, and a string of precocious child activists were trotted out on the lecture circuit with recycling testimonials that scanned as first drafts of future college application essays. Nine-year-old Molly Steer announced the “Straw No More” initiative on the TEDx stage in Australia, while the brother-sister team Olivia and Carter Ries introduced their nationwide “One Less Straw” campaign as teenagers in 2016.
Then Hollywood joined the cause. Brooklyn Decker and Neil deGrasse Tyson starred in viral PSAs for the #stopsucking campaign—which elicited 50,000 pledges to give up plastic straws and amassed 831 million media impressions. Influencers from Leonardo DiCaprio to Chelsea Clinton vowed their hashtag loyalty to the #stopsucking revolution, and the issue took a victory lap as icons from Martha Stewart to Tom Brady shared their social media endorsement throughout 2018.
Where celebrities tweet, brands soon follow. Alaska Airlines replaced stir straws with “marine-friendly stir sticks” to take the “next step on our sustainability journey.” Royal Caribbean bid a bon voyage to single-use straws as part of their “Save the Waves” initiative. Hyatt, McDonald’s, and Disney phased out the shameful suckers in the name of climate compassion, while IKEA publicly exhibited its last plastic straw at London’s Design Museum as an “emblem for change.” Most conspicuously, Starbucks announced in July 2018 it would replace its signature green straws with recyclable lids to honor the company’s “long history in sustainability.”
On the back of this PR tailwind, the anti-straw zeal glided effortlessly from press release to policy proposal, as governments around the world wrote plastic purges into law. Seattle became the first major American city to bar single-use straws in July 2018. Other progressive strongholds soon passed similar legislation, and California became the first state to ban nonrequested straws in September 2018. India barred single-use straws by 2022, and France went one step further to outlaw plastic cups in 2020. Even Queen Elizabeth insisted that the sinful silicate be purged from the royal estate. The campaign’s sudden, intercontinental success offers a case study in what might be called the iron law of internet activism: viral animal video + quotable scare stat = “great moral cause of our time,” or at least until the next cute cat collides with a scaremonger stat on Twitter.
But what about that original statistic that launched a thousand hashtags? Where did this estimate of 500 million daily straws come from? The answer: a 9-year-old boy in Vermont. And the story of how this number goes from an elementary school to public policy reveals something essential but rather disconcerting about the progressive political imagination in the age of social media, and how misinformation takes root and then spreads in today’s highly politicized media ecosystem.
The year is 2011, and Milo Cress is in fourth grade in Burlington, Vermont. In the spirit of personal conservation, the 9-year-old launches the “Be Straw Free” campaign to persuade neighborhood restaurants and “concerned citizens to reduce the use and waste of disposable plastic straws.” Due to the lack of reliable figures on the issue, the fourth-grader decides to conduct a phone survey with three national manufacturers and averaged the results to reach the estimate that the country consumes 500 million straws each day. Our fledgling activist promptly earns adoring local and national coverage. Then in 2012, the nonprofit Eco-Cycle picks up Milo’s campaign and partners with the National Parks Service to publish a blog post on Milo’s research. And once a statistic enters the hallowed ground of a dot.gov URL—voila—the number is now enshrined as fact-checking gospel. Five years later, the 500 million figure is everywhere: appearing in CNN, USA Today, The Washington Post, Fox News, NPR, National Geographic, and The New York Times. The number graces U.N. climate reports, nonprofit white papers, and proposed bills in statehouses from Hartford to Sacramento. Climbing from a fourth grade classroom in Burlington Elementary to the governor’s desk in Sacramento in seven short years—Milo’s statistic grew up to be somebody.
It is important to note—in the name of context—that other straw counts from professional research groups are more conservative than Milo’s number. The market research firm Technomic estimates Americans use 170 million straws per day, and the Freedonia Group puts the number at 390 million. The Foodservice Packaging Institute, an 85-year-old trade association, estimates fewer than 250 million straws are consumed each day. But I did not write this piece to quibble with the venerable Foodservice Packaging Institute about their daily straw quotas—for my concern is not quantifying what Americans drink but qualifying how Americans think.
The viral success of Milo’s statistic is a symptom of a larger liberal failing—where the combination of complacent journalism, social media activism, and gullible audiences hungry for easy solutions come together to divert the energy for reform toward strawman causes. On closer examination, disposable straws are hardly Public Enemy No. 1 in the war on plastic. A 2018 study of the Pacific Waste Patch found that the main aqua pollutant was fishing nets (46%) and only 8% came from microplastics. While straws do make up 4% of total plastic trash by piece, they weigh so little that billions of straws make up just 0.0002% of the plastic littering the oceans each year. To add it all up: Straws account for 2,000 tons of the 9 million tons of annual plastic sea waste— or two ten-thousandths of the world’s marine pollution.
There is another issue: Alternatives to straws often prove more harmful to the environment than the status quo. To take one example, Starbucks replaced their old straw-and-lid combo with a recyclable “sippy” lid. But when Verify’s Jason Puckett weighed both the classic and the new Starbucks lid, he discovered the new “sustainable” version is 0.6 grams heavier than the old. In other words, the alternative out-pollutes the original.
To summarize, the straw ban is a policy based on unverified data from an elementary school student targeting a microscopic problem which often aggravates the malady it attempts to remedy. So how did we get here? Why did this policy become the cause célèbre for the climate cognoscenti?
What people choose to believe and what they choose to doubt is an urgent question in American political life. In a sharply polarized culture, skepticism tends to follow party lines. The right naturally distrusts liberal claims, and the left instinctively suspects conservative arguments. When presented with statistics that challenge one’s core values, most partisan soldiers will scrutinize the number for potential bias or prejudices—will look for the flaws in the source, not the subject. In this sense, skepticism is primarily a defensive weapon in politics, guarding against misinformation from outside rather than within the group. Yet when one encounters a data point that meets your preexisting worldview, you’re inclined to accept rather than interrogate. Scruples dissolve in the warm glow of self-validation. Thus, the critical eye melts into a forgiving ear ... especially when the big-ticket issues of the left enter the public square.
The consequences of this disparity are magnified by the liberal monopoly on legacy journalism jobs (where only 7% of journalists were Republicans in 2013). In such an uneven landscape, certain subjects earn maximal scrutiny while other agendas receive minimal scrutiny at a systematic scale. Add in the looming specter of “cancel culture,” and this discrepancy in coverage can evolve, in some newsrooms, from an honest oversight to a moral imperative. Even reporting statistics that complicate the prevailing progressive viewpoint is increasingly controversial at many high-profile outlets. (In just one example, Matthew Yglesias sparked an office scandal at Vox by publishing a story about the decrease in police shootings of African Americans since Ferguson.) The more sensitive the topic, the less contravening evidence will be tolerated in certain left-wing circles. Thus, the most important progressive issues of the day often have the least informed, nuanced discussions.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/straw-ban-arguments
****************************************Australia: Grave doubts about the accuracy of BOM records
They are frantically trying to cover up the distortions in what they have done
A dispute over how the Bureau of Meteorology records daily temperatures is hotting up, with the release of more than 1000 pages of data that show new probes can record different temperatures to mercury thermometers in the same location at the same time.
The documents, released after a years-long Freedom of Information campaign, show temperature measurements taken using updated BOM probes in automatic weather stations at the Brisbane Airport site could be up to 0.7C warmer than the temperature taken using a traditional thermometer at the same time at the same site.
More than three years after a FOI request for parallel data was lodged by scientist John Abbot, the BOM released three years of data on Easter eve after the matter was taken to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
In the end, the BOM released only limited data, paving the way for a wave of FOI demands that full records be released in the public interest.
Release of the data is the first opportunity to analyse the performance of BOM probes alongside mercury thermometers. The bureau has long claimed the readings are identical but critics have said the BOM was not following World Meteorological Organisation guidelines on how they should be used.
Given that even small variations in temperature recordings can have an impact on the long-term record, accuracy is vital.
The main issue is how well temperatures recorded by new technologies can be compared to earlier methods to establish a continuous record.
The BOM maintains that an assessment of the full 2019-22 period at Brisbane Airport finds no significant difference between the probe and mercury thermometers.
Yet analysis of the data by scientist Jennifer Marohasy has found a statistically significant difference exists. Over the three-year period for which records have been made available, probes returned temperatures higher than the mercury thermometers placed alongside them 41 per cent of the time.
Recordings were the same 32.8 per cent of the time and lower 25.9 per cent of the time.
Dr Marohasy said the BOM had not disputed that the probe at Brisbane Airport had recorded up to 0.7C warmer than the mercury at the same site at the same time.
She said the bureau had not provided comment on the actual difference daily between temperatures as measured by the probe and the mercury, nor the average monthly or annual difference between the probe and the mercury.
In response to questions from The Weekend Australian, the bureau said it “verifies temperature probes to ensure that they are within specification”. The BOM said the temperature measurement system at Brisbane Airport was verified 24 times between January 2008 and July last year.
“Probes undergo a verification test in situ to ensure the probe is operating within specification”, it said. “If the result of this test is that the probe is outside of its operating specification, it is replaced with a laboratory-verified probe.
“A second verification test is undertaken to ensure it is compliant with the specification. “This verification process is more rigorous and reliable than recalibration.”
The documents released by the BOM under the FOI request included 1094 A8 reports with the handwritten daily maximum and minimum temperatures from both probes and traditional liquid-in-glass thermometers recorded from instruments in the same shelter/Stevenson screen.
They represent about 20 per cent of the parallel records held for the Brisbane airport site, one of 38 sites originally requested under FOI.
Dr Marohasy said analysis of the Brisbane airport data proved the BOM claim that the new probes had been specially developed to measure exactly the same temperatures as the mercury thermometers was wrong. Dr Marohasy has had a years long dispute with the BOM over the accuracy of the new probes and what she says is a failure by it to adhere to WMO guidelines to average the data recorded and maintain mercury thermometers alongside new technologies for an extended period.
“Readings from the probe are taken every second, and the highest value in a 24-hour period becomes the maximum temperature for that day. WMO guidelines recommend that instantaneous readings from probes be averaged over at least one minute”, she said.
Dr Marohasy said the difference in readings between probes and mercury thermometers was significant.
“Given new ‘hottest ever’ days are often called and make newspaper headlines when the temperature is only some fractions of a degree warmer, future new record hot days could be a consequence of the probe rather than global warming”.
“This has implications for the artificial generation of new record hot temperatures”, she said.
The other key issue was that Brisbane Airport parallel data showed a dramatic change in the difference between the mercury and probe temperature readings after December 2019.
“It is important to know whether this average difference of 0.35C had been caused by a recalibration of the probe that is the official recording instrument at Brisbane Airport”, she said.
Dr Abbot said he would request further parallel data sets from the BOM and was hopeful that previous barriers to access in regard of the existence of these records and costs would not reoccur. “Under FOI legislation, fee waivers should be granted as the information derived is clearly in the public interest” Dr Abbot said.
“We hope previous assertions from the BOM that analysis of parallel temperature data is only of benefit to John Abbot personally and has no public interest will not reoccur,” he said.
“The public is constantly being told of impending global catastrophe should temperatures rise by more than 1.5C. Discrepancies of more than 0.5C because of instrumentation differences are therefore very significant, and certainly should satisfy the public interest test”, Dr Abbot said.
“Different measuring instruments have been used to record temperatures at Brisbane Airport. Given the importance of reliable continuous records, it is important to know whether these instruments are recording the same temperatures, or not. The parallel data so far made available constitutes only a small portion of what the BOM holds.
“It is important to extend the analyses to longer periods and for other geographical locations.”
Dr Abbot first requested the parallel data for Brisbane Airport on December 12, 2019.
The case eventually went before the AAT on February 3, 2023, and was subsequently resolved with the bureau agreeing to provide three years of data.
Dr Marohasy said the data represented just three of the 14.5 years (January 2008 to July 2022) of parallel data that the bureau held for Brisbane Airport.
“It is also just a fraction of the 760 years of parallel data the bureau holds for 38 different locations spread across the landmass of Australia,” she said.
Probes in automatic weather stations began replacing mercury thermometers across Australia and the world 30 years ago.
Dr Marohasy said the probes were generally more sensitive to changes in temperature, so they could measure extremes of temperatures that traditional mercury thermometers with slower response times could not detect.
Most meteorological offices tried to achieve equivalence between the probes and mercury by averaging instantaneous recordings from probes over 1-5 minutes.
Dr Marohasy said the BOM adopted took instantaneous readings every second from custom-designed probes with longer time constants purported to mimic mercury thermometers.
The bureau has claimed in correspondence with Dr Marohasy that it never averaged measurements from probes.
Bureau chief executive Andrew Johnson has told her the probes were specifically designed to have a long response time to mirror the behaviour of mercury in glass, making numerical averaging unnecessary.
Dr Marohasy said the lack of numerical averaging despite the use of probes made the BOM measurements unique in the world.
She said equivalence was important for the construction of reliable historical temperature datasets, for understanding temperature trends and for knowing whether a record hot day as measured automatically by a probe really was hotter than what might have been read manually from a mercury thermomete
***************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
*****************************************
Jim Hansen and his twin
No comments:
Post a Comment