You Need To Stop Pooping To Help Solve ‘Climate Change’ Or Something

By William Teach January 23, 2019 – 3:15 pm

Warmists actually sit around and think about this stuff, debate it, investigate it (with taxpayer money, because almost no one else will fund it), and write about it

THE WATER IN YOUR TOILET COULD FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE ONE DAY

DAY AFTER DAY, you pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, whether you’re driving or turning on lights or eating meat. You can’t help it, because, really, no human can. But I bet you haven’t stopped to think about how the simple act of pooping is also part of the problem: Worldwide, wastewater treatment facilities account for 3 percent of electricity consumption and contribute 1.6 percent of emissions.

A drop in the horrifying bucket that is climate change, you might say. But researchers are beginning to explore how we might tweak wastewater treatment technology to capture CO2 instead of emitting it, as a way to slow the ravages of climate change. If their plan works out, at least our poop can be guilt-free.

Currently, the stuff you flush in the toilet or send down the drain ends up in a facility, along with liquid waste from industries like beer or wine making. All that organic matter sits in open-air tanks where microbes feed on it. They munch on the waste and release CO2 as a byproduct, and the facility then pumps the relatively clean (but far from drinkable) water out to sea.

On its own, a person’s poop is carbon neutral (save for emissions from growing and transporting food): Plants capture carbon from the air by way of photosynthesis, you eat the plants, you produce the carbon as waste. When those microbes eat that waste and release the CO2 back to the atmosphere, it ends up right where it started.

Except that the wastewater treatment facilities need energy to operate. There might be a way to tweak this process, however. Some microbes, like bacteria and microalgae, feed on CO2 itself. “They would eat up the organic carbon and then convert the CO2 into chemicals, for example ethanol,” says Princeton University environmental engineer Zhiyong Jason Ren, who co-authored a recent Nature review of potential carbon capture techniques in wastewater treatment. So one potential fix would be to replace the typical microbes used in wastewater treatment with these CO2-guzzlers. “You treat wastewater but also you reduce CO2into something more valuable.”

Valuable like????? The only thing mentioned is ethanol. Better yet, you could just stop pooping.

This focus on a new marketable product is intentional, to circumvent the biggest hurdle to carbon capture in all its forms: It’s just not profitable. A corporation has no incentive to, say, plant forests or install a carbon-sucking device on its premises if doing so only hurts its finances. Making carbon capture technologies take off will either require legislation to mandate them, a new business opportunity, or both.

Funny how government force always comes into play. And this article continues to go on and on, ending with

Let’s leave it at this: It wouldn’t be the worst thing if our poop helped scrub the atmosphere. It might even be just the place to start.

Read: You Need To Stop Pooping To Help Solve ‘Climate Change’ Or Something »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach January 23, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is a field that will soon die from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Bunkerville, with a post on Notre Dame covering up Columbus.

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Your Fault: ‘Climate Change’ Could Maybe Possibly Might Mess With Ratio Of Male-To-Female Babies

By William Teach January 23, 2019 – 10:30 am

No worries, since the insane left has decided that there’s no such thing as gender anymore

Climate change will affect the ratio of male-to-female newborns, scientists say

Global warming will have a variety of effects on our planet, yet it may also directly impact our human biology, research suggests.

Specifically, climate change could alter the proportion of male and female newborns, with more boys born in places where temperatures rise and fewer boys born in places with other environmental changes, such as drought or wildfire caused by global warming.

Wait, is it global warming or climate change?

A recent study in Japan found a link between temperature fluctuations and a lower male-to-female sex ratio at birth, with conceptions of boys especially vulnerable to external stress factors, wrote Dr. Misao Fukuda, lead study author and founder of the M&K Health Institute in Hyogo.

I would have thought this would make the men haters in the far left happy.

Last summer, Fukuda and his colleagues published a separate study looking at births in areas hit by environmental events that caused extreme stress. They included Hyogo Prefecture after the Kobe earthquake of 1995; Tohoku after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 (and subsequent nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daichii power plant); and Kumamoto Prefecture after the 2016 earthquakes.

Nine months after these disasters, the proportion of male babies born in these prefectures declined by between 6% and 14% from the previous year. This data supports the idea that major stress affects gestation, which in turn alters the newborn sex ratio, Fukuda and his co-authors wrote.

None of these have anything to do with changes in the climate, regardless of whether it is mostly/solely man-caused or mostly/solely natural

Stress stemming directly from “climate events caused by global warming” might also affect the sex ratio, Fukuda wrote in an email. Though scientists do not know how stress affects gestation, Fukuda theorizes that the vulnerability of Y-bearing sperm cells, male embryos and/or male fetuses to stress is why “subtle significant changes in sex ratios” occur.

Full stop. So, they have zero idea on the subject, do not have data on this, and are simply prognosticating. And the rest of the story is simply supposition, not science. Surprise?

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Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

SCOTUS To Review Restrictive NYC Gun Law

By William Teach January 23, 2019 – 8:12 am

Sticking with both the NY Times and the Supreme Court, we see them taking on an interesting gun control case

Supreme Court Will Review New York City Gun Law

The Supreme Court said on Tuesday that it would review a New York City gun law that limits residents from transporting their guns outside their homes, its first Second Amendment case in nearly a decade and a test of the court’s approach to gun rights after the arrival of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh in October.

Justice Kavanaugh, who replaced the more moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and created a reliable five-member conservative majority, has an expansive view of gun rights. His presence most likely means that the Supreme Court will start exploring and perhaps expanding the scope of the Second Amendment.

“It could be a landmark case with major implications for gun policy,” said Adam Winkler, the author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.” “The case could articulate broad principles about the Second Amendment, and especially the Second Amendment outside the home.” (snip)

The New York City ordinance challenged in the new case allows residents with so-called premises licenses to take their guns to one of seven shooting ranges within the city limits. But the ordinance forbids them to take their guns anywhere else, including second homes and shooting ranges outside the city, even when they are unloaded and locked in a container separate from ammunition.

Remember, the gun grabbers say they aren’t trying to grab guns, that they do not want to cause problems for the law abiding, they just want to make it harder for criminals to use them. Yet, against and again, we see them pass laws that make it more and more difficult for law abiding citizens to exercise their 2nd Amendment Rights.

Three city residents and the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association sued to challenge the law but lost in Federal District Court in Manhattan and in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. A unanimous three-judge panel of the Second Circuit ruled that the ordinance passed constitutional muster under the Heller decision.

In urging the Supreme Court to hear their appeal in the case, New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. City of New York, No. 18-280, the challengers said the restrictions imposed by the New York City ordinance were unique in the nation and made no sense.

“Only New York City flatly prohibits its residents from removing their lawfully purchased and duly registered handguns from the city limits, even to transport them (unloaded, and locked up) to second homes at which they are constitutionally entitled to possess them, or to out-of-city shooting ranges or competitions at which they are constitutionally entitled to hone their safe and effective use,” the challengers’ brief said.

On one hand, there needs to be consideration in that the permits were pretty darned specific in laying out scope of the permits and what can and can’t be done, and people went and obtained them in order to have a firearm for home defense. On the other, should there even be a permit which restricts law abiding citizens in this manner, one meant to pass “constitutional muster under the Heller decision” and not a millimeter past it? One made to really subvert the 2nd Amendment rights of law abiding citizens?

Now we wait and see. We might take the gun grabbers talking points about not wanting bad people to have firearms if the vast majority of their rules, regs, and laws were actually aimed at criminals, things like making punishments harsher, instead of at the law abiding.

Read: SCOTUS To Review Restrictive NYC Gun Law »

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Supreme Court Votes To Block People With Mental Illness From Serving In Armed Forces For The Time Being

By William Teach January 23, 2019 – 7:56 am

It’s not a hard thing to do to find information on the huge amount of mental illness problems among those who are increasingly calling themselves “transgender”, what is medically termed Gender Dysphoria. Their rates of suicide, being suicidal, and depression are sky high. Add that all the changes they put their bodies through via things like hormones, and they aren’t the best candidates to serve to defend the nation during time of war. Hey, they may be nice people, they may want to serve, but the military shouldn’t be a testing ground for social justice stuff

Supreme Court Revives Transgender Ban for Military Service

The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted the Trump administration’s request to allow it to bar most transgender people from serving in the military while cases challenging the policy make their way to the court.

The administration’s policy reversed a 2016 decision by the Obama administration to open the military to transgender service members. It generally prohibits transgender people from military service but makes exceptions for those already serving openly and those willing to serve “in their biological sex.”

The vote to lift two injunctions blocking the policy issued by lower courts was 5 to 4, with the Supreme Court’s five conservative members in the majority.

So, to be clear, this ban is not really a ban, it is an injunction which keeps it in place until such other cases make it to the court. So, of course we’re getting unhinged rants like featured first in the NY Times opinion section, including the web front page

The Supreme Court Just Ended My Military Career

(I’m going to skip past the long recitation of this biological males runup to being gender confused)

No one, including the lawyers for the Trump administration, has been able to show that inclusion of transgender service members or providing care to them has had any measurable negative impact on morale, readiness or unit cohesion. The chiefs of staff of all four service branches of the military have testified to Congress that there have been no issues.

Notice the part about “care for them”. Home many times have we see these gender confused demand that the military pay for their transitions, including operations? And these GC demand that they be allowed to use the same showers, bathrooms, dorms, and such as the opposite biology.

For me, however, it probably marks the end of almost 10 years of trying to find a way to serve my country in uniform again. The court also rejected the administration’s request for a quick hearing on the ban itself, which means at least another year of waiting. By then I will have likely aged out of my eligibility.

If this were through some failing of mine, I could accept it. But it speaks volumes about where we are as a country that the opportunity for many to serve should be denied by the prejudices of a few.

Again, the military doesn’t exist to be a petri dish of discovery. Go join the Peace Corps or something if you want that. I’m not questioning the heart or willingness to fight for these folks, I’m questioning their value and ability to not cause problems.

Read: Supreme Court Votes To Block People With Mental Illness From Serving In Armed Forces For The Time Being »

Posted in Barking Moonbats, Current Affairs | 29 Comments | Trackback URL

Heavy European Snow Caused By You Driving A Fossil Fueled Vehicle

By William Teach January 22, 2019 – 3:48 pm

You should probably keep you home at 58, too. Oh, heck, just wrap yourself in blankets. This comes from the Department Of Blaming And Linking Things To ‘Climate Change’ No Matter How Absurd. You could have imagined Monty Python doing a sketch on this back in the 70’s

Weatherwatch: climate change cooks up ideal conditions for snow

Look at all that snow in the Alps; has global warming taken a break? Alas, no, it turns out that the recent record-breaking dumps of snow across much of southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria are more likely a consequence of global warming. Why? Balmy temperatures in the North Sea and Baltic Sea are cooking up the ideal conditions to create snow.

Right now, average surface water temperatures in the North Sea are about 8C (46F), while the Baltic Sea is hovering at about 3C (37F). It might sound bracing, but as data from the Danish Meteorological Institute shows, these numbers are a good couple of degrees warmer than average for the time of year. And herein lies the problem. “Global warming enhances the current snowfall … Anomalously high sea surface temperatures in the North Sea and Baltic are loading winds from the north with moisture,” tweeted Stefan Rahmstorf of the University of Potsdam last week. Meanwhile, warmer than average air temperatures across northern Europe in early January provided the ideal environment to turn all that moisture into snow.

And that’s the extent of their “proof” that the carbon footprints of Other People are causing warming which causes heavy snow.

First they told us that the end of snow was coming. Now they blame snow on warming. Cult.

Read: Heavy European Snow Caused By You Driving A Fossil Fueled Vehicle »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach January 22, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is a dark, dreary, rainy day caused by carbon polluting farm animals, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is 90Ninety Miles From Tyranny, with a post on SJWs vs logic thug life.

Also horse “Stop posing for social media, Karen. Go put some clothes on and feed me.”

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Surprise: Fight For $15 In NYC Causes Exactly What Was Predicted

By William Teach January 22, 2019 – 10:30 am

Well, predicted by most people who understand economics, unlike Bill DeBlasio, who’s worried more about social justice

And now, via Legal Insurrection, CBS News reports

The legal minimum wage for New York City employers with 11 or more workers rose more than 15 percent on Dec. 31, 2018, to $15 per hour from $13, giving fast-food, retail and other employees a bump in pay. But some New York City restaurant owners say the latest minimum wage hike is forcing them to cut workers’ hours just to stay afloat.

It’s the third rise in the city’s base wage since Dec. 31, 2016, when it went to $11 an hour. The latest increase is part of a plan that phases in minimum wage hikes across New York state, with amounts and effective dates varying by region and industry. It’s not just a New York phenomenon, however: Minimum wages rose in 20 states with the new year, forcing businesses across the country to grapple with higher payrolls — and compete for workers with giants like Amazon that are already offering $15 an hour.

Jon Bloostein operates six New York City restaurants that employ between 50 and 110 people each. The owner of Heartland Brewery and Houston Hall, Bloostein said the effect of the higher minimum wage on payroll across locations represents “an immense cost” to his business.

“We lost control of our largest controllable expense,” he told CBS MoneyWatch. “So in order to live with that and stay in business, we’re cutting hours.”

Bloostein said he has scaled back on employee hours and no longer uses hosts and hostesses during lunch on light traffic days. Customers instead are greeted with a sign that reads, “Kindly select a table.” He also staggers employees’ start times. “These fewer hours add up to a lot of money in restaurants,” he said.

Bloostein said he has increased menu prices, too.

As Legal Insurrections Mike LaChance notes “This is what happens when professional activists and legislators, many of whom have never owned or operated a business, make decisions for job creators.”

https://twitter.com/matlau10/status/1086078386252869634

Good job, folks!

Read: Surprise: Fight For $15 In NYC Causes Exactly What Was Predicted »

Posted in Democrats, Economy | 9 Comments | Trackback URL

AOC: ‘Climate Change’ Is Millennial’s World War II Or Something

By William Teach January 22, 2019 – 7:48 am

Wait, I thought it was income inequality? Equality of the sexes? Fight for $15? Soaking the rich? Amnesty for all? This kind of thing by super unserious thinkers reminds me of an old shtick by the Bob And Tom Show called “You’re Not Helping The Show“. I can’t find the more fleshed out version, which included lines like “Dead puppies…..not funny.” Things like this really do not help the cause of the Cult of Climastrology except in the fever swamp minds of the cultists. Especially when she sounds like a 15 year old

OCASIO-CORTEZ: CLIMATE CHANGE IS MILLENNIALS AND GEN. Z’S ‘WORLD WAR II’

Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed that climate change is millennials’ version of World War II during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event on Monday at Riverside Church in New York City.

“I think that the part of it that is generational is that millennials and people, in Gen Z, and all these folks that come after us are looking up and we’re like, the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change. And your biggest issue is, your biggest issue is how are we going to pay for it? — and like this is the war, this is our World War II,” Ocasio-Cortez began.

“I think for younger people, we’re looking at this are more like, how are we saying ‘let’s take it easy’ when 3,000 Americans died last year, how are we saying ‘let’s take it easy’ when the nth person died from our cruel and unjust criminal justice system?” she asked.

“How are we saying take it easy, when the America that we’re living in today is dystopian with people sleeping in their cars so they can work a second job without healthcare and we’re told to settle down. It’s a fundamental separation between that fierce urgency of now, the why we can’t wait that King spoke of,” Ocasio-Cortez added.

As you can see, ‘climate change’ is just a part of the overall progressive/leftist/socialist/Marxist/whatever you want to call it push for big big big government. It’s a tool, like the Fight For $15, which puts people out of work. It’s not science. It’s politics.

Read: AOC: ‘Climate Change’ Is Millennial’s World War II Or Something »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Democrats, Global Warming, Unhinged Tools | 27 Comments | Trackback URL

David Brooks Wonders About Social Media Destroying Lives

By William Teach January 22, 2019 – 7:30 am

NY Times opinion writer David Brooks is someone who those on the right can mostly disagree with. Like most writers for the NY Times. He does have a few salient points, but is missing two big things

How We Destroy Lives Today
Will the Covington Catholic High School fiasco change social media?

Within living memory, political polarization had at least something to do with issues, but in the age of social media it’s almost entirely about social type. It’s about finding and spreading the viral soap operas that are supposed to reveal the dark hearts of those who are in the opposite social type from your own.

It’s about finding images that confirm your negative stereotypes about people you don’t know. It’s about reducing a complex human life into one viral moment and then banishing him to oblivion.

You don’t have to read social theory on this phenomenon; just look at the fracas surrounding the Covington Catholic High School boys.

(A couple paragraphs on what went down early, when social media created a Narrative to blame the kids)

Many news organizations ran one of these accounts. Before you judge the reporters too harshly, it’s important to remember that these days the social media tail wags the mainstream media dog. If you want your story to be well placed and if you want to be professionally rewarded, you have to generate page views — you have to incite social media. The way to do that is to reinforce the prejudices of your readers.

Actually, we do need to judge the reporters harshly. Yes, yes, rush to do stories, but, David wrote it: the majority are completely biased towards Democrats, and do not care to get the facts before getting the story in their news outlets, a soundbite on TV, and in their own social media platforms. This causes way, way, way more damage than most social media arguments. And when the real story comes out, many of these same media types fail to cover it, and many circle the wagons because they were wrong.

Look at the amount of investigation into the kids, the school, and the school employees that’s occurring, even after it has been shown social media and the news media got the story completely wrong. Kids are being doxxed. More stories are being manufactured (ZOMG, white power symbol!!!! which is actual for a 3 point shot). Media outlets won’t give up. They’re doing more investigation than they did with Obama.

Further, you also have politicians rushing to judgement. In this case, Democrat ones. Where are they now in apologizing to the kids?

So Sunday was a day of conservative vindication. See? This is what those liberals do! They rush to judgment, dehumanize and seek to expunge us from national life. The main boy wrote a public letter that was consistent with the visual evidence and that was actually quite humane.

In this case the facts happened to support the right-wing tribe. But that’s not the point. The crucial thing is that the nation’s culture is now enmeshed in a new technology that we don’t yet know how to control.

Actual, the facts are the point. To go with the rush to judgement, which would have been minor had the news media done their jobs correctly.

And thanks to the news media rushing to judgement, rather than waiting for facts, the Covington School is closed today due to all the death threats to children.

Read: David Brooks Wonders About Social Media Destroying Lives »

Posted in Current Affairs, Democrats, Journalistic Malpractice, Unhinged Tools | 2 Comments | Trackback URL
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