The Climate Crisis Could Maybe Possibly We Think Cause Lots Of Extinctions Or Something

By William Teach April 10, 2020 – 7:17 am

I caught this study yesterday, but, didn’t bother posting on it, because I wanted to wait to see where the media went with it

Climate change could cause sudden biodiversity losses worldwide

A warming global climate could cause sudden, potentially catastrophic losses of biodiversity in regions across the globe throughout the 21st century, finds a new UCL-led study.

The findings, published today in Nature, predict when and where there could be severe ecological disruption in the coming decades, and suggests that the first waves could already be happening.

The study’s lead author, Dr Alex Pigot (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research): “We found that climate change risks to biodiversity don’t increase gradually. Instead, as the climate warms, within a certain area most species will be able to cope for a while, before crossing a temperature threshold, when a large proportion of the species will suddenly face conditions they’ve never experienced before.”

“It’s not a slippery slope, but a series of cliff edges, hitting different areas at different times.”

Dr Pigot and colleagues from the USA and South Africa were seeking to predict threats to biodiversity over the course of the 21st century, rather than a single-year snapshot. They used climate model data from 1850 to 2005, and cross-referenced it with the geographic ranges of 30,652 species of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and other animals and plants. The data was available for areas across the globe, divided up into 100 by 100 km square grid cells.

“Climate model data.” Why not use the actual data? It’s 2020. The actual temperature and other readings are available. And why stop in 2005? Could it have something to do with being deep in a warming pause?

The researchers predict that if global temperatures rise by 4°C by 2100, under a “high emissions” scenario which the researchers say is plausible, at least 15% of communities across the globe, and potentially many more, will undergo an abrupt exposure event where more than one in five of their constituent species crosses the threshold beyond their niche limit within the same decade. Such an event could cause irreversible damage to the functioning of the ecosystem.

If warming is kept to 2°C or less, potentially fewer than 2% of communities will face such exposure events, although the researchers caution that within that 2% includes some of the most biodiverse communities on the planet, such as coral reefs.

There’s been just a 1 degree Celsius rise since 1850: 4C may be the worst case, but even another 1C rise in the next 80 years is silly.

The researchers predict that such unprecedented temperature regimes will begin before 2030 in tropical oceans, and recent events such as mass bleaching of corals on the Great Barrier Reef suggest this is happening already. Higher latitudes and tropical forests are predicted to be at risk by 2050.

And what will these climahysterics do when this doesn’t happen by 2030? Will there be apologies for perpetuating doomsaying prognostications?

Of course we get

Just a smattering of “we’re doomed. Maybe. Possibly.” We can fix this all with a tax and you giving up your freedom, liberty, and choice.

Read: The Climate Crisis Could Maybe Possibly We Think Cause Lots Of Extinctions Or Something »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

Hot Take: NY Times Says Authoritarian Rule Is Just Around The Corner

By William Teach April 10, 2020 – 7:00 am

Excitable Paul Krugman is Very Concerned. See, he thinks authoritarian rule is coming, but fails to mention all the people arrested, detained, and fined over failing to social distance. Like that guy on the paddleboard who wasn’t near anyone. Or how about the use of ankle monitors in Kentucky? And using Google data to track where everyone is going? And more? Nope, something different, in a piece that would have been in Prison Planet or the Democratic Underground 10 years ago

American Democracy May Be Dying
Authoritarian rule may be just around the corner.

(info on the really bad unemployment data)

Yet the scariest news of the past week didn’t involve either epidemiology or economics; it was the travesty of an election in Wisconsin, where the Supreme Court required that in-person voting proceed despite the health risks and the fact that many who requested absentee ballots never got them.

Why was this so scary? Because it shows that America as we know it may not survive much longer. The pandemic will eventually end; the economy will eventually recover. But democracy, once lost, may never come back. And we’re much closer to losing our democracy than many people realize.

To see how a modern democracy can die, look at events in Europe, especially Hungary, over the past decade.

What happened in Hungary, beginning in 2011, was that Fidesz, the nation’s white nationalist ruling party, took advantage of its position to rig the electoral system, effectively making its rule permanent. Then it further consolidated its control, using political power to reward friendly businesses while punishing critics, and moved to suppress independent news media.

Until recently, it seemed as if Viktor Orban, Hungary’s de facto dictator, might stop with soft authoritarianism, presiding over a regime that preserved some of the outward forms of democracy, neutralizing and punishing opposition without actually making criticism illegal. But now his government has used the coronavirus as an excuse to abandon even the pretense of constitutional government, giving Orban the power to rule by decree.

Obviously, you can see where Conspiracy Theorist Paul is going. And he links this all to the recent primary in Wisconsin, in which the GOP forced them to vote in person, because that’s kinda what the law requires. And the GOP is only in charge of the legislature because of gerrymandering (the Dems never do that, right?), even though Dems had more votes (funny how they hate allowing other people their voices). And this all means

This November, it’s all too possible that Trump will eke out an Electoral College win thanks to widespread voter suppression. If he does — or even if he wins cleanly — everything we’ve seen suggests that he will use a second term to punish everyone he sees as a domestic enemy, and that his party will back him all the way. That is, America will do a full Hungary.

See, it was Trump who forced Hillary to forgo visiting several states she needed, like Wisconsin. And be a terrible candidate and a terrible person. And pass out on 9/11. And violate all those national security rules, regs, and laws.

What if Trump loses? You know what he’ll do: He’ll claim that Joe Biden’s victory was based on voter fraud, that millions of illegal immigrants cast ballots or something like that. Would the Republican Party, and perhaps more important, Fox News, support his refusal to accept reality? What do you think?

Paul should just come out and write it, having gone this far: he thinks Trump will go dictator and refuse to leave. But, we’ve seen this same thing when it came to George Bush in 2004 and 2008, but those conpiracy theories came more from places like Prison Planet, the Democratic Underground, the Daily Kos, and other hardcore places, not the New York Times

So that’s why what just happened in Wisconsin scares me more than either disease or depression. For it shows that one of our two major parties simply doesn’t believe in democracy. Authoritarian rule may be just around the corner.

See, all those people getting sick and dying isn’t that bad in Paul’s World. The First Street Journal notes that the Supreme Court refused to change the voting laws in Wisconsin, especially when there were no provisions of mail in ballot security. Further

Dr Krugman bemoans his fears of authoritarian rule, yet the left in general, and The New York Times specifically, have been cheering that very same authoritarian rule by Democratic governors and mayors, with our constitutional rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments just blithely swept aside, as the majority of the public seem to support. When we are allowing, with only a few ineffectual protests, state Governors to use the force of law, backed up by police power, to confine people to their homes, to stop cars with out-of-state license plates, and to go door-to-door demanding to know if a resident has been in a certain place, all done without a warrant, all done without any semblance of due process of law, all done without people having a day in court, that is when we are experiencing authoritarian rule, and the esteemed Dr Krugman hasn’t uttered the first peep of protest over it.

Yup. I don’t see Paul complaining about NYC, where the Times is located, raising fines for not social distancing from $500 to $1000.

Read: Hot Take: NY Times Says Authoritarian Rule Is Just Around The Corner »

Posted in Unhinged Tools | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach April 9, 2020 – 1:00 pm

…are wonderful recycling bins which help stop climate doom (but you don’t actually use yours), you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Pacific Pundit, with a post on Democrats being stuck with Handsy Joe after Comrade Bernie dropped out.

From what I hear, Authorities arrested her for being out and about and stuck her in jail for 6 months.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

Pope Francis Links Bat Soup Virus To ‘Climate Change’

By William Teach April 9, 2020 – 10:30 am

This is a holy week for Christianity, as we approach Easter on Sunday. So, what does the Pope talk about? He could talk about the teachings of Jesus, the concepts of the New Testament, the evils of abortion, on loving each other, on tolerance. Nope

Pope Francis says coronavirus could be ‘nature’s response’ to climate change

Pope Francis likened the coronavirus pandemic to recent fires and floods as one of “nature’s responses” to the world’s ambivalence to climate change.

“There is an expression in Spanish: ‘God always forgives, we forgive sometimes, but nature never forgives,’” the pope said in an interview published Wednesday in The Tablet, a United Kingdom-based Catholic weekly.

The pope, 83, was responding to whether he believed coronavirus could spur ecological conversion, the idea for people to lead more environmentally conscious lives through the understanding that the natural world is a creation of God.

He’s not my pope, I’m not Catholic. He doesn’t seem to care much about the precepts of Catholicism, though. He’s more of a social justice warrior.

The pope went on to say he believed the COVID-19 outbreak that has ravaged the globe could inspire change.

“This is the time to take the decisive step, to move from using and misusing nature to contemplating it,” he said.

With more than 1.5 million coronavirus cases reported across the world, the pope said the virus has shined a “spotlight on hypocrisy” as large outbreaks continue to in the United States and parts of Europe.

“This crisis is affecting us all, rich and poor alike, and putting a spotlight on hypocrisy,” he said.

The only crisis is an imaginary one, spread by charlatans and cultists. It’s appropriate Pope Francis wore red

Read: Pope Francis Links Bat Soup Virus To ‘Climate Change’ »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 48 Comments | Trackback URL

Bat Soup Virus Is A Dress Rehearsal For ‘Climate Change’ Or Something

By William Teach April 9, 2020 – 7:03 am

Nope, this is not the same article that Bloomberg trotted out, The Nation has their own little spin, and it unsurprisingly involves hardcore Cult of Climastrology politics and economic plans

Coronavirus Is a Dress Rehearsal for Climate Change

The under-reaction by the US government to the coronavirus was not inadvertent, a mistake. It was in part the result of a decades-long campaign to degrade the very idea that government can be a useful, essential aspect of our lives, that it can allow us to collectively accomplish tasks far beyond the capacity of any individual. Today, unfortunately, the dominant view in America, held by essentially all Republican leaders and too many Democratic ones, is that the “free market” always delivers better outcomes than the government.

But that’s the self-serving view of those who benefit most in our “winner-take-all” economy. What we need instead is a healthy, regulated balance between civil society, government, and private enterprise. And if we’re smart, we’ll use this current crisis to rebalance the scales in America. The bailouts this time cannot be like the 2008 variety, in which bankers got bonuses and millions of homeowners got screwed. We don’t just need strings attached to this bailout. We need steel cables. The interests of ordinary people must come first. Period.

Perhaps the most important lesson of the coronavirus is that if we don’t prepare now, and start thinking about how to stop problems before it’s too late, we’re risking everything we care about: our homes, our jobs, and the health of our loved ones. This is where the virus has something very important to teach us—if we’re willing to learn.

The climate crisis is going to be many, many times worse. It may happen more slowly, but let’s not kid ourselves. Greater disease transmission, food shortages, energy blackouts, floods, homelessness, joblessness, species extinction—each will stagger us and then do so again.

And, see, the only way to solve this is by Government forcing a balance between civil society, government, and private enterprise.

It goes without saying that we desperately need to change course in order to avert the worst impacts of climate change. Fortunately, what’s needed is not mysterious, but it is hard and is definitely not short-term. We can save our climate by investing in jobs policies that will transform and improve manufacturing, agriculture, electrification, transportation, housing, infrastructure, care work—and virtually every aspect of our economy. The relevant question is whether we do so in a way that will help working-class, middle-class, and poor Americans first, not last. This is how we take responsibility for the world our children and grandchildren will inherit and inhabit.

The authors of this piece never actually get around to saying what they would transform “virtually every aspect of our economy” to. What it would look like. This is typical climate cultist dissembling, because they know they would scare a lot of people off if they actually explained what would happen, essentially, once again, government controlling all aspects of people’s lives, controlling all private entities. Government taking freedom, liberty, and choice away, along with a lot of money we earn. It would create an authoritarian government.

Read: Bat Soup Virus Is A Dress Rehearsal For ‘Climate Change’ Or Something »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

Pentagon Shoots Down ABC Report That White House Knew About Bat Soup Virus In November

By William Teach April 9, 2020 – 6:47 am

See, ABC “News” tried this

This sent many resistance types over the edge. But, see, there’s a big problem

Defense official says media reports about November coronavirus intel assessment are false

A defense official on Wednesday issued a rare denial of reports by ABC News and others that claimed a November intelligence assessment warned about a rapidly spreading coronavirus in China that posed a threat to American forces in the region.

The official said no such assessment existed.

ABC News cited unnamed officials with knowledge of the assessment by the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) that raised concerns of the coronavirus and highlighted how it was disputing daily life and business in the area.

Col. R. Shane Day, the director of the NCMI, a component of the Defense Intelligence Agency, refuted the ABC News report in a statement.

“As a matter of practice the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters,” he said. “However, in the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists.”

I’m utterly shocked, shocked I tell you, that ABC ran a hit piece with zero named sources. And then they wonder why Trump attacks them as fake news. Expect this to show up during today’s press conference.

The supposed intelligence reportedly was obtained through wire and computer intercepts and satellite images. ABC News did not immediately respond to a Fox News request for comment Wednesday.

The DIA and NCMI spent the past 24 hours going over anything that could be related to the alleged assessment, but failed to find anything, a defense official told Fox News.

ABC News reported that the White House was briefed several times about the document, with one source telling the outlet that “analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event.” Another source said policy-makers and decision-makers across the federal government, including the National Security Council at the White House, were repeatedly briefed on the matter.

And ABC offers zero named sources for all this. And the Credentialed Media wonders why their ratings for being trustworthy are so low. It’s strange how virtually every hit piece from the media, every attempt to dunk on him, every attempt to score point, includes no named sources. It’s almost like they are making stuff up. Sometimes I wonder whether it’s actually the Trump admin feeding the media this stuff to make the media look bad as bad as they really are, knowing they’ll run off that cliff like Wiley E. Coyote.

Read: Pentagon Shoots Down ABC Report That White House Knew About Bat Soup Virus In November »

Posted in Donald Trump, Journalistic Malpractice | 13 Comments | Trackback URL

Tone Deaf Chicago Mayor Makes A Good Point After Getting Out And About For A Haircut

By William Teach April 8, 2020 – 3:00 pm

See, the thing is, our Political Betters always are excused from practicing what they preach

Left-wing Chicago mayor gets testy after being called out for haircut when it’s banned for everybody else: ‘I’m the public face of this city’

Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said late last month that the growing coronavirus outbreak “is deadly serious. And we have to take it seriously, all of us.”

“I personally been concerned about what I’ve seen in our parks, people playing basketball,” she added during her news conference. “And what I’ve seen along our lakefront, way too many people gathering like it’s just another day. This is not just another day.”

To that end, city officials warned that social distancing violators could be fined $500 and then could be arrested.

They won’t be arrested, though, nor will illegal aliens in sanctuary jurisdiction Chicago

See, one of Illinois’ social distancing stipulations, like other states operating in this way, is that nonessential businesses are supposed to be shut down. Among them are barber shops and hair salons, WBBM-TV reported.

But Lightfoot got a haircut over the weekend — and defended doing so.

“I am practicing social distancing,” she said Monday, the station noted. “The woman who cut my hair had a mask and gloves on. So … I’m practicing what I’m preaching … we are trying to do everything we can to emphasize the messages around social distancing, washing your hands, staying at home. But as [an] elected official and the public face of the city, I need to make sure that I am out there and visible through this crisis.”

The Chicago Tribune reported that when Lightfoot was asked a follow-up question about the issue — that included a reference to a public service announcement in which she says “getting your roots done is not essential” — the mayor became “visibly annoyed.”

“I’m the public face of this city. I’m on national media, and I’m out in the public eye,” Lightfoot added, according to the paper. “I’m a person who, I take my personal hygiene very seriously. As I said, I felt like I needed to have a haircut. I’m not able to do that myself, so I got a haircut. You want to talk more about that?”

Now, there are quite a few people blasting her for this, and rightfully so. But, look at the bold: she kinda has a point, besides staying at home. People need to be careful, wash their hands (BTW, via the woman walking into Target earlier, I don’t think it helps when you wear a mask and gloves but also wear flip flops, short shorts, and a muscle T, leaving all that skin exposed), and get on with their lives. The show must go on. We need to do things like get our hair cut. Maybe not go to bars and nightclubs and parties, but, what about having restaurants at half capacity, where people can sit a table away from others? Staggered seating. Go to the beach. We can have space. And so forth.

She’s still a hypocrite, though, and has set the terms where anyone arrested for being out will sue the city.

Read: Tone Deaf Chicago Mayor Makes A Good Point After Getting Out And About For A Haircut »

Posted in Democrats | 11 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach April 8, 2020 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible plastic bottle, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Legal Insurrection, with a post on shady reporting that Trump has a financial interest in hydroxychloroquine.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 36 Comments | Trackback URL

NY Times Extols The “Magic Of Empty Streets”

By William Teach April 8, 2020 – 10:30 am

Contributing opinion writer Allison Arief, whose focus is design and architecture (do we really need opinion on that?) is super thrilled with all these empty streets, forgetting that they’re empty because people are scared, sick, and dying. They aren’t working, they’re fearful of getting booted from their homes, losing their cars, having no money to eat. But, hey, Modern Socialists see an opportunity

The Magic of Empty Streets
Social distancing gives us a rare chance to fix cities.

We’re in week four of sheltering in place here (it feels like week 40). It’s a completely unfamiliar situation in so many ways. As someone who has lived in cities her whole adult life, for me it’s especially strange to experience a time when all the things I love are no longer available. Nearly everything is closed — restaurants and shops, libraries and museums, and of course all schools. All nonessential workers are under a mandatory work-from-home order.

But these efforts to stem the spread of the coronavirus have also offered us a rare experiment: We can see our cities for the first time without the choking traffic, dirty air and honking horns that have so often made them intolerable.

Throughout the world, the coronavirus has forced extreme changes in our behavior in just days. And we’re already seeing the impact of those changes: On Monday, for example, Los Angeles had the cleanest air of any major city in the world.

Yes, changes that have decimated our economy, but, it’s easy for people like Allison who’re getting paid to write this stuff to be cavalier about empty streets being magic.

As a die-hard urbanist, it’s heartening for me to see how many people are adapting, turning the city into a pedestrian paradise. Parks are populated to an extent I’ve never seen before (though some are too populated). Streets are crowded not with cars but with people — and accordingly, pedestrian fatalities (and subsequent emergency room visits) have plummeted.

Yeah, they’re doing it because they have nothing else to do because they are not working and not making money.

Streets are also quieter. Skies are bluer than I’ve ever seen. I saw a dad in the park last week doing a Zoom meeting from a lawn chair while his kids played on the grass. People are saying hello, people are offering to help neighbors, people are rediscovering board games and puzzles, bread-baking and canning.

OK, I can agree with her on that. We do tend to get caught up in the hustle and bustle. I like giving a smile to all the people I see on the greenway when I go for a walk.

If streets become so much safer, if air quality can change so much in just weeks, can we be more hopeful about our efforts to combat climate change?

Pedestrian advocates have suggested converting traffic signals to four-way stops so that people aren’t bunched up in groups waiting to cross. There’s also a move to deactivate “beg buttons,” that thing you push when you’re trying to get a “walk” signal to cross the street. We shouldn’t be touching them now, obviously, but more broadly, they’re designed not so much for pedestrian safety but to serve drivers. Anything that puts pedestrians first and cars second will have a significant impact on the quality of city life and, ultimately, the climate.

What will things look like in the future? How will we navigate our cities? Will we be able to wander in and out of stores and cafes as we do now? That remains to be seen: In China, information design has crossed over into surveillance, requiring citizens to use software on their smartphones that dictates whether they should be quarantined or allowed to go out in the world. Each individual is assigned a QR code based on a health assessment: A red QR code confines you to two weeks of self-quarantine, a yellow one indicates one week, and a green code means that you can move around as you desire.

Germany plans to introduce coronavirus “immunity certificates” to indicate who has recovered from the virus and is ready to re-enter society. It is likely that similar ID’ing mechanisms will emerge here in the United States and elsewhere. Working to ensure that this sort of visual marking of health status doesn’t devolve into profiling, discrimination or worse is essential.

Those sound like wonderful ideas to control the population, don’t they?

Ultimately, what we really need to figure out is how the world gets put back together. Our new Covid-19 reality shows that behavior can change. It is also, however, making it glaringly apparent how poorly existing systems (and places) have been working for most. Time and tragedy create opportunity — in this case an opportunity to make them work for all.

She doesn’t really answer the “how”. I’m betting we can figure out what she wants. No cars, everyone riding the bus or walking or biking. Government in charge.

Read: NY Times Extols The “Magic Of Empty Streets” »

Posted in Global Warming, Liberal World | 11 Comments | Trackback URL

Planting Lots Of Trees Could Do More Harm Than Good For ‘Climate Change’ Or Something

By William Teach April 8, 2020 – 8:02 am

After decades of pushing to plant tree after tree after tree, planting millions and billions of trees, with carbon offset companies saying they will use (some of the money) to plant trees, we’re now getting pushback from the Cult of Climastrology about planting trees

Climate change: UK forests ‘could do more harm than good’

Mass tree planting in the UK could harm the environment if not planned properly, a report warns.

Badly-planned trees would increase greenhouse gas emissions, say the government’s advisers on the economic value of the natural environment.

The report comes from the Natural Capital Committee (NCC), which says planting trees into peat bogs would prove a serious mistake.

Peat locks up vast quantities of carbon – but trees dry out peat.

This can release more greenhouse gases than the trees absorb.

One NCC member, Prof Ian Bateman from the University of Exeter, said: “The mantra has to be ‘the right tree in the right place’.“

“We would be crazy to undertake the massive scale of planting being considered if we did not also consider the wider effects upon the environment including impacts on wildlife, benefits in terms of reducing flood risks and effects on water quality, improvements to recreation and so on.”

Soooooo, trees aren’t proper for everywhere?

The report adds that carpeting upland pastures with trees would reduce the UK’s ability to produce meat – which may lead to increasing imports from places that produce beef by felling rainforests.

Huh. Why are they suddenly coming out softly against all those trees?

(Vox) During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Trump didn’t breathe a word about climate change, the most serious threat to our security, health, economy, and natural world.

He did, however, mention his surprising new support for trees.

“To protect the environment, days ago, I announced that the United States will join the One Trillion Trees Initiative, an ambitious effort to bring together government and the private sector to plant new trees in America and all around the world,” Trump said.

As soon as Trump mentioned his support of the Trillion Trees Initiative, Warmists started finding ways to poo-poo it. Here’s Mother Jones

Trump’s Plan to Plant a Trillion Saplings Misses the Forest for the Trees
As a means to address climate change, it’s a complete cop-out.

CNN

Trump’s desperate embrace of ‘one trillion trees’

Gizmodo

Trump’s Vow to Help Plant a Trillion Trees Is Worse Than Stupid

The Verge

PLANTING 1 TRILLION TREES MIGHT NOT ACTUALLY BE A GOOD IDEA

If Trump came out in favor of gun control and abortion on demand, leftists would find reasons to be pro-gun and pro-life.

Read: Planting Lots Of Trees Could Do More Harm Than Good For ‘Climate Change’ Or Something »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL
Pirate's Cove