Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

From Global Warming

5 Comments

…to global greening. Thoughts from Matt Ridley:

Suppose I am right and our grandchildren find that we were greatly exaggerating the risks, and underestimating the benefits of CO2.

Suppose they do indeed experience carbon dioxide levels of 600 parts per million or more, but do not experience dangerous global warming, or more extreme weather, just a mild and decelerating increase in global average temperatures, especially at high latitudes, at night and in winter, accompanied by spectacular global greening and less water stress for both people and crops.

Does it matter that our politicians panicked in the early 2000s? Surely better safe than sorry?

Here’s why it matters. Our current policy carries not just huge economic costs, which hit the poorest people hardest, but huge environmental costs too.

We are encouraging forest destruction by burning wood, ethanol and biodiesel.

We are denying poor people the cheapest forms of electricity, which forces them to continue relying on wood for fuel, at great cost to their health.

We are using the landscape, the rivers, the estuaries, the hills, the fields for making energy, when we could be handing land back to nature, and relying on forms of energy that nature does not compete for – fossil and nuclear.

But there is a further reason why it matters. Real environmental problems are being neglected. The emphasis on climate change as the pre-eminent environmental threat means that we pay too little attention to the genuine environmental problems in the world.

We bang on about ocean acidification when it is overfishing and run-off that is most hurting coral reefs.

We misdiagnose climate change as the cause of floods when it is land drainage and urban development that is the cause.

We claim climate change as the cause of extinctions, when it is invasive species that disrupt and damage ecosystems and drive out rare species.

We say climate change is a threat to air quality, when it is climate policy that has hindered progress in improving air quality.

We talk about losing seabird colonies to warming seas and then build wind farms that slaughter the birds while turning a blind eye to overfishing.

Here’s why I really mind about the exaggeration: it has downgraded, displaced and discredited real environmentalism, of the kind I have devoted part of my life to working on.

I have worked on wildlife conservation projects in India, Pakistan and elsewhere. Climate change is the least of the problems facing birds like the western tragopan, the lesser florican, the cheer pheasant and the grey phalarope, rare species that I once studied and published peer-reviewed papers about.

The climate obsession has used up money and energy and political will that could have been used for getting rid of grey squirrels, for protecting coral reefs, for preventing deforestation and overfishing, for weaning the rural poor in Africa off bushmeat and wood fuel.

Yes.

I wrote earlier today that I don’t worry about increased concentrations of plant food in the atmosphere. This is part of the reason why.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Public-Pension Crisis

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“May be worse than we think.”

I’d say is almost certainly worse than we think, or at least it’s lot worse than public officials want to pretend it is.

We have a personal stake in this, because Patricia is in CalPERS, for health and pension. Needless to say, we’re not counting on it. And reminder: If California gets a bail out from Uncle Sugar, it should only be on condition that it become a territory, and not be allowed back into the union until it gets its fiscal act together, and not as a single state.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The FBI Investigation Summary

43 Comments

…proves in and of itself that she broke the law.

If those agents are patriots, they’ll come forward before the election.

Also, related: Hillary’s security detail requested reassignment due to her abuse. This is totally in character; numerous Secret Service agents reported similar behavior when she was First (non)Lady. A young Chelsea reportedly followed her parents’ lead and called them “trained pigs.”

[Update a few minutes later]

More at the Daily Caller:

People inside the bureau are furious. They are embarrassed. They feel like they are being led by a hack but more than that that they think he’s a crook. They think he’s fundamentally dishonest. They have no confidence in him. The bureau inside right now is a mess.”

He added, “The most important thing of all is that the agents have decided that they are going to talk.”

They need to talk before the election. After will be too late.

[Update a few minutes later]

Hillary’s sworn deposition reveals more public lies. Of course it does. She’s been getting away with lying, under oath and otherwise, for decades. Why would she think she can’t continue, particularly on the verge of becoming totally beyond the law?

[Update a couple minutes later]

Victor Davis Hanson: The case for Trump:

Trump’s defeat would translate into continued political subversion of once disinterested federal agencies, from the FBI and Justice Department to the IRS and the EPA. It would ensure a liberal Supreme Court for the next 20 years — or more. Republicans would be lucky to hold the Senate. Obama’s unconstitutional executive overreach would be the model for Hillary’s second wave of pen-and-phone executive orders. If, in Obama fashion, the debt doubled again in eight years, we would be in hock $40 trillion after paying for Hillary’s even more grandiose entitlements of free college tuition, student-loan debt relief, and open borders. She has already talked of upping income and estate taxes on those far less wealthy than the Clintons and of putting coal miners out of work (“We are going to put a whole lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business”) while promising more Solyndra-like ventures in failed crony capitalism.

The damage done by the lawlessness and corruption of the Democrats is incalculable. Trump is and will be terrible, but here’s my simple case to vote for him:

1) He’s not her.
2) Unlike her, he can be impeached and removed, and will provide an opportunity to rein in a tyrannical executive branch.
3) It would issue a huge and well-deserved F**k You to the media.

[Update a while later]

“It’s almost impossible to keep up with the evidence of Clinton misconduct, wrongdoing and illegality that continues to emerge. It is overwhelming.”

And three weeks before an election, the most important one of our lifetimes, I think.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, War Commentary

Want To Restore Article II?

32 Comments

Elect Donald Trump:

We are in the last few weeks of a presidential campaign that presents the most horrible choice on offer in our lifetimes, and perhaps in American history. The worst things that each major-party candidate say about each other are largely true. The next President to take the oath to defend and preserve the Constitution will very likely either be someone who despises it (particularly the first two amendments of the Bill of Rights), or someone who has almost certainly never even read it. Both of them have high public levels of disapproval, and a large swathe of the nation will loathe the next president, regardless of who wins. That is where we are. But there may yet be a glimmer of hope.

My thoughts, over @ricochet.

[Friday-morning update]

Related thoughts from Ace:

So both are bad actors. The question which remains is: Which bad actor will be more restrained by the political establishment of Washington DC?

You can’t judge a predator’s ability to ravish an environment without looking at the environment in which that predator operates.

Trump, if these allegations are true (and even if they’re not — he’s still shady and megalomaniacal) is a jackal being released into a swamp full of alligators looking to devour him.

Do I fear the jackal abroad in the swamp full of alligators? Well — no. No I don’t.

I almost pity him.

This jackal, being megalomaniacal, may think he can bully and beat up the alligators.

The rest of us know better, and know this particular jackal will be a warm, full feeling in someone’s belly by the dawn of the third day.

Clinton, meanwhile, is a jackal being set loose in a field full of sheep with no defenses (any Republican or Christian unprotected by the elite power structure) and a pack of ravening jackal minions who will gladly join her in hunting and tearing apart the sheep.

Yes.

[Late-morning update]

Trump the transgressive candidate. I do think he is unique to the moment.

[Saturday-morning update]

Let me make the point a different way. Mitt Romney liked to be able to fire people. The American people should like that, too. Trump is the only one of the two to whom we’ll be able to say “You’re fired!”

[Sunday-afternoon update]

I hadn’t noticed this at the time, but David Galernter was thinking along the same lines about the same time (though I actually pointed it out months ago):

Mrs. Clinton is right at home in the Oval Office and thinks she owns it. She holds herself entitled to supreme power, as her friends are entitled to fancy positions with enormous salaries and her followers to secure government jobs or ample government funds, as the case may be.

But forget psychology. Ordinary politics says that Mr. Trump will not do crazy things or go off half-cocked, because Republicans in Congress will be eager to impeach him and put Mike Pence in charge. That was the subtext of the vice-presidential debate, though Mr. Pence himself (probably) didn’t intend it. When it’s my turn, you can all relax. Democrats, obviously, will be eager to help when the task is removing a Republican.

Impeachment is Trump-voters’ ace in the hole. It’s an abnormal measure, but this is an abnormal year. Impeachment has temporarily dropped out of sight because of special circumstances. Republicans impeached Bill Clinton but got burned in the process; Mr. Obama, as the first black president, was impeachment-proof. Any other president would have encountered serious impeachment talk on several occasions, especially when he ignored Congress and the Constitution and made his own personal treaty-in-all-but-name with Iran.

As I pointed out, she will be impeachment proof as well, because a) she’s a Democrat, b) she’s a Clinton and c) any attempt to do so will be decried as “sexism.”

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