NY Times Notices That Palm Oil Is Pretty Bad For The Environment And ‘Climate Change’

By William Teach November 20, 2018 – 3:41 pm

You may remember me railing against palm oil. It has led to deforestation, destruction of wildlife habitats, intentional and unintentional killing of wildlife. Like the Times once realized that using food for fuel was a Bad Idea, they now realize

From the article, which is a massive  one investigating and discussing

Most of the plantations around us were new, their rise a direct consequence of policy decisions made half a world away. In the mid-2000s, Western nations, led by the United States, began drafting environmental laws that encouraged the use of vegetable oil in fuels — an ambitious move to reduce carbon dioxide and curb global warming. But these laws were drawn up based on an incomplete accounting of the true environmental costs. Despite warnings that the policies could have the opposite of their intended effect, they were implemented anyway, producing what now appears to be a calamity with global consequences.

The tropical rain forests of Indonesia, and in particular the peatland regions of Borneo, have large amounts of carbon trapped within their trees and soil. Slashing and burning the existing forests to make way for oil-palm cultivation had a perverse effect: It released more carbon. A lot more carbon. NASA researchers say the accelerated destruction of Borneo’s forests contributed to the largest single-year global increase in carbon emissions in two millenniums, an explosion that transformed Indonesia into the world’s fourth-largest source of such emissions. Instead of creating a clever technocratic fix to reduce American’s carbon footprint, lawmakers had lit the fuse on a powerful carbon bomb that, as the forests were cleared and burned, produced more carbon than the entire continent of Europe. The unprecedented palm-oil boom, meanwhile, has enriched and emboldened many of the region’s largest corporations, which have begun using their newfound power and wealth to suppress critics, abuse workers and acquire more land to produce oil.

Again, it keeps going on and on. The worst part is that this is primarily focused on the man-caused climate change scam, rather than the real environmental damage caused by the spread of palm oil. The Girl Scouts pledged to stop using palm oil in their cookies after a few of girls petitioned over the environmental destruction, especially how orangutans have been intentionally hunted and killed.

As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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If All You See…

By William Teach November 20, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible cat causing massive sea rise, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Moonbattery, with a post on raaaaacist dogs being reported to British police.

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Bummer: The U.S. Is Becoming A Two-Tiered Voting Laws Country

By William Teach November 20, 2018 – 10:59 am

It’s funny that we really didn’t hear any of these same whines while Obama was in office, but, in the Era of Trump, everything is horrible for liberals. Even after doing well in the House, zomg, voting is horrible, and has made Ari Berman at Mother Jones very upset

The United States Is Becoming a Two-Tiered Country With Separate and Unequal Voting Laws

Phoebe Einzig-Roth, an 18-year-old freshman at Atlanta’s Emory University, moved to Georgia in August and was excited to vote in her first election. But when she went to her polling location near campus on Election Day, election officials told her she’d been flagged as a noncitizen. Even though she’d brought three forms of identification—her Massac­husetts driver’s license, passport, and student ID—she was forced to cast a provisional ballot.

Three days later, she went to confirm her citizenship at the local election office, where she was assured her vote would be counted. But she kept checking Georgia’s online “My Voter Page” and there was no record it had been. She posted a picture of herself on Facebook wearing an “I’m a Georgia Voter” sticker and wrote, “The thing that infuriates me the most about voter suppression is not that it happened to me, but that it happened, and is continuing to happen to thousands of people all over the country, and most of the time, nothing is done to stop people from being turned away at the voting polls.” She told me a few days later, “I don’t believe my vote will count.”

Einzig-Roth was right that she was far from alone. Voters in Georgia and other states faced onerous barriers to performing their civic duty this year. As these voters were running into obstacles, residents of other states were passing ballot measures to strike down voting restrictions and make voting easier for many more people. These parallel worlds mean voting in America today looks a lot like it did more than half a century ago. We’re becoming two Americas again: one where casting a ballot is a breeze, and another where it’s a pitched battle.

Of course Mr. Berman has to use Georgia, because Democrats are claiming that the governor’s election was stolen from Stacey Abrams. Here’s the thing: a two minute search might have scuttled this whole debate

Georgia requires voters to be residents of the State and county where they register and intend to vote.[5] Your residency address is the place where your habitation is “fixed,” without a present intention to leave.[6] Voting residency therefore requires both physical presence and the intent to remain.

At School. If you move to a school address in Georgia with the intent of making it your fixed home, you can establish voting residency in Georgia.[7] If you move to a school address in Georgia, you can establish residency in Georgia if you have a present intention to remain at your Georgia school address for the time being, and intend to make it your principal home. An indefinite intention to move somewhere else at some future period will not prohibit you from establishing voting residency.[8] Any other interpretation of the residency laws is unconstitutional.[9] Likewise, any question or challenge made solely on the basis of your student or tuition status is invalid.[10]

Did Phoebe change her residency to Georgia? That’s not mentioned. She didn’t change her driver’s license from Mass., which is part of the requirement to be a Georgia citizen. Was she moving back with her parents in Mass. during summer break? Not a resident. How many college kids change their residency when they are attending college? Not many.

The whole thing is a typical whine, but, the even more amusing part is how people waited in long lines on election day in big cities, which are mostly run be Democrats, which exposes that they’re incompetent. There are actually so many false whines in this article that it would require a giant article to refute them all. But, the people who come to Mother Jones as liberals just bob their head in agreement.

The one big thing that was missed was the notion that it is very much the elites that push voting. This is a problem with both parties. And that the elites tend to get more representation than the peons.

Read: Bummer: The U.S. Is Becoming A Two-Tiered Voting Laws Country »

Posted in Democrats, Elections, Unhinged Tools | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

Your Fault: ‘Climate Change’ Is Like A Terror Movie!

By William Teach November 20, 2018 – 7:38 am

Too bad the movie isn’t like A Quiet Place, because it’s getting tedious listening to Warmists look into their crystal balls and give their future prognostications

‘Like a Terror Movie’: How Climate Change Will Cause More Simultaneous Disasters

Global warming is posing such wide-ranging risks to humanity, involving so many types of phenomena, that by the end of this century some parts of the world could face as many as six climate-related crises at the same time, researchers say.

This chilling prospect is described in a paper published Monday in Nature Climate Change, a respected academic journal, that shows the effects of climate change across a broad spectrum of problems, including heat waves, wildfires, sea level rise, hurricanes, flooding, drought and shortages of clean water.

Such problems are already coming in combination, said the lead author, Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He noted that Florida had recently experienced extreme drought, record high temperatures and wildfires — and also Hurricane Michael, the powerful Category 4 storm that slammed into the Panhandle last month. Similarly, California is suffering through the worst wildfires the state has ever seen, as well as drought, extreme heat waves and degraded air quality that threatens the health of residents.

Things will get worse, the authors wrote. The paper projects future trendsand suggests that, by 2100, unless humanity takes forceful action to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change, some tropical coastal areas of the planet, like the Atlantic coast of South and Central America, could be hit by as many as six crises at a time.

That prospect is “like a terror movie that is real,” Dr. Mora said.

We can fix this all with a tax, you know. Because the storms and events and such now are totally different from the ones when CO2 was below the safe threshold of 350ppm. Like, say, during the time of the Black Death.

The authors include a list of caveats about the research: Since it is a review of papers, it will reflect some of the potential biases of science in this area, which include the possibility that scientists might focus on negative effects more than positive ones; there is also a margin of uncertainty involved in discerning the imprint of climate change from natural variability.

So, wait, it’s not actually a scientific study, it’s just a bunch of folks looking at papers from people who are pushing anthropogenic climate change doom? This same study is being pimped throughout the news media. Yet, no one is stopping to say “can you prove any of this?”

New York can expect to be hit by four climate crises at a time by 2100 if carbon emissions continue at their current pace, the study says, but if emissions are cut significantly that number could be reduced to one. The troubled regions of the coastal tropics could see their number of concurrent hazards reduced from six to three. (snip)

In a scientific world marked by specialization and siloed research, this multidisciplinary effort by 23 authors reviewed more than 3,000 papers on various effects of climate change. The authors determined 467 ways in which those changes in climate affect human physical and mental health, food security, water availability, infrastructure and other facets of life on Earth.

Can you prove any of this?

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Kamala Harris Is Super Excited For More Gun Control

By William Teach November 20, 2018 – 7:02 am

I wonder if she can explain how it’s working in California?

Democrat Kamala Harris: Time for Congress to Pass More Gun Control

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) tweeted Sunday to claim no one is immune from gun violence and it is time for Congress to pass more gun laws.

Harris referenced Parkland, the site of the February 14 attack that killed 17 innocents, Chicago, the city of relentless violence and death, and Los Angeles, where 14 people were recently killed in an attack at the Borderline Bar & Grill.

Harris did not mention that Parkland was a gun-free zone, that Chicago has long been an experiment in gun control, and that the Borderline Bar & Grill is a state-mandated gun-free business.

She tweeted:

Ironically, Harris did not name a specific law that Congress should pass. But if we use the example of Los Angeles alone, it is hard to name a gun control that does not already exist.

For example, California has universal background checks, firearm registration laws, red flag laws, a requirement that would-be gun buyers first get a certificate of safety from the state, a ten-day waiting period for gun purchases, an “assault weapons” ban, a one-handgun-a-month purchase limit, a “good cause” qualification for concealed carry permit issuance, a ban on campus carry, a ban on carrying guns in places that serve alcohol for consumption, and controls for ammunition purchases.

Additionally, Los Angeles has a citywide ban on “high-capacity” magazines.

She literally has zero policy positions on either her older Kamala Harris for Senate page nor her official Senate page, so, we can’t figure out what she wants from there. The Democratic Party platform says

With 33,000 Americans dying every year, Democrats believe that we must finally take sensible action to address gun violence. While responsible gun ownership is part of the fabric of many communities, too many families in America have suffered from gun violence. We can respect the rights of responsible gun owners while keeping our communities safe. To build on the success of the lifesaving Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, we will expand and strengthen background checks and close dangerous loopholes in our current laws; repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) to revoke the dangerous legal immunity protections gun makers and sellers now enjoy; and keep weapons of war—such as assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines (LCAM’s)—off our streets. We will fight back against attempts to make it harder for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to revoke federal licenses from law breaking gun dealers, and ensure guns do not fall into the hands of terrorists, intimate partner abusers, other violent criminals, and those with severe mental health issues. There is insufficient research on effective gun prevention policies, which is why the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must have the resources it needs to study gun violence as a public health issue.

What part of that would have stopped those shootings? Despite all the massive gun laws in California, it didn’t stop the Thousand Oaks shooter. In fact, they didn’t use the Red Flag laws available. They do want to put gun shops and gun makers out of business through lawsuits, which would make it difficult for law abiding citizens to get a hold of weapons for protection. Heck, even for hunting and sport shooting.

So, what does Kamala want Congress to do? She won’t say.

Read: Kamala Harris Is Super Excited For More Gun Control »

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Gov. Moonbeam: Skeptics Will Be Believers In Under 5 Years

By William Teach November 19, 2018 – 4:13 pm

Considering the authoritarian nature of the political left, is this a threat? Will we be forced to Believe? We’ve seen enough tweets and articles and statements and cartoons about forcing people to Believe, about jailing them, and even killing/executing them

Jerry Brown: ‘In Less Than 5 Years’ Even the Worst Climate Change Skeptics ‘Are Going to Be Believers’

Sunday on CBS’s’ “Face the Nation,” Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said the increasing wildfires in California meant that “in less than five years” the “worst skeptics” were going to be believers in climate change.

On the California fires, Brown said, “Well, how they started is now the subject of investigation. The consultation occurs because the brush, the vegetation is so dry, and the humidity is so low. And when you have that and then the heat and years of drought, that gets it going. In paradise, there were a lot of buildings that also caught fire, and it just went from one to the other. So it’s a mixture of many things, and the president talked about how our forests are managed. That’s an element. But there is also the way the houses were built, the materials, what kind of vegetation is around, and then there’s also the changing climate and the increasing drought and the lowered humidity and water vapor. All of that is combining to create the tragic situation that we saw today in both northern California and here in southern California.” (snip)

He added, “The only way to assure the long-term forest health is not just, you know, cutting trees, it’s going to require reducing carbon emissions and eventually, sooner rather than later to zero. If we don’t do that, you’re going to see these fires not only continuing but getting worse by the year as they are. The last five years, the fires have never been this bad. This fire in Malibu is the worst we’ve ever seen. This fire in Paradise in Northern California is the worst in the history of California. So, yeah, you can mold the science, but I’ll tell you, every year it’s going to get clearer and clearer so that I think in less than five years even the worst skeptics are going to be believers.”

Interesting, since the cause of the fires have been things like down power lines and automobiles and camp fires and such. Not a tiny increase in atmospheric CO2 and global temperature.

https://twitter.com/BigJoeBastardi/status/1064319535795326976

Perhaps if Jerry would give up his own use of fossil fuels and make his life carbon neutral he might persuade me back into the fold. But, you can bet he’ll take a long fossil fueled flight to Poland for the upcoming UN IPCC climate change meeting.

Read: Gov. Moonbeam: Skeptics Will Be Believers In Under 5 Years »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 12 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach November 19, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible old school kitchen which is not only sexist, but when CO2 was below the safe level of 350ppm, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Climatism, with a post noting that Paradise, California has not been experiencing drought.

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NJ Library Limits Books Checked Out In Order To Increase Screen Time

By William Teach November 19, 2018 – 10:53 am

In case you haven’t figured it out, I read a lot. Sometimes as much as 2 to 3 books a week. Mostly science fiction, some fantasy, horror, a few mysteries. Anyhow, remember the days growing up, and checking books out at the library? Heck, you may still do this. All my books come via Kindle, but, my dad loves checking out all the libraries in his county during his retirement. I used to do the same here, and Wake County has a grade A library system. But, you can only check out so many at a time. You have to return some to get more, right? Not in this school system

Library is limiting book rentals to boost kids’ screen time. Parents are peeved.

Every week, students at elementary schools in Mahwah could take out books from the school library. That changed at the start of this school year, and parents are concerned as to why. Some are downright angry.

Under a policy shift to have students receive more technology instruction, students in grades K-3 now take out books every other week and students in grades 4-5 take out books every three weeks.

“We’re hearing a lot of words and they’re the right words,” said Matthew Park, a parent attending a board of education meeting last week.

“And we hear people talk about how much they love reading and how (they) don’t want to take books out of kids hands. What’s being said is not matching up with objective reality and the reality is kids are getting fewer and fewer books into their hands.”

Superintendent C. Lauren Schoen said the district does not devalue reading and the policy change to check out books was not done to get rid of the library and media program, or the specialist position or to deprive students of books or reading time.

“Students access to books has not been dramatically limited,” she said. “Students still have access to books.”

Just not very often, because the school system wants them playing on their technology devices. Ridiculous.

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You Can Talk About ‘Climate Change’ At Thanksgiving And Not Ruin It Or Something

By William Teach November 19, 2018 – 7:39 am

It’s that time of year where the media is giving all sorts of instructions on how to totally ruin the holidays by making it uber-political, which emanate primarily from liberal outlets, since Democrat voters need to be told what to say. And, because they’re pretty much the ones who ruin holidays. And what better than combining the talk with ‘climate change’? And where better to go than an “arts and leisure” section?

HOW TO TALK ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE (AND NOT RUIN TURKEY DINNER)

David Court gave a lecture on Wednesday night, something he does a lot as a professor of Geography at Santa Barbara City College, only this time his audience was at the Mammoth Brewing Company and was probably much more sober than he’s used to. 

Court, who also works at the Earth Research Institute in UC Santa Barbara and as a guide with Dave Miller’s International Alpine Guides in the summers, gave a presentation entitled “How To Talk About Climate Change and Not Ruin Turkey Dinner.” 

During the conversational lecture, Court debunked climate myths, offered facts that his audience could cite in conversation, and ran through some social psychology techniques that may make it easier to change your stubborn Uncle Bob’s mind at the Thanksgiving table.

Or, better yet, keep it to yourself rather than starting a fight at the table (or while people are just enjoying the day). Yeah, I know, that would be asking too much of Warmists

Myth #1: The Science is Not Settled

“If its cold outside, how can there be global warming?” your Uncle Bob might ask.

“It’s like Colbert said,” Court joked, “I just ate, therefore there is no world hunger.”

Court described climate as a personality and weather as a mood. Your grandpa might have a lovely personality, but when the Packers are losing he’s in a foul mood. So, too, does a cold day not preclude a warming climate.

It was this early on in the lecture that Court kicked the piece of paper he had been holding and said, “F*%k the notes.”

“There is consensus among 99.9% of scientists on anthropogenic [human-caused] climate change. Only one in 17,000 disagree, and that will always happen. It’s like the guy in [Monty Python’s] Life of Bryan who after Brian tells the crowd that they are all individuals says, ‘I’m not.’”

Oh, now it’s 99.9%. Love to see him prove it.

Myth #2: So what if the planet gets warmer? I like it warm.

If your Uncle Bob says he likes it a little warmer, Court said try to humor Bob and think of what benefits might come from climate change. It will be easier to explore the arctic. Crops will grow farther north, Russia will certainly have more usable land. Some even say there will be fewer winter deaths, but that doesn’t really make sense. That’s about it.

The ill-effects are slightly scarier and more numerous. There will be drought and famine, like there was recently in Syria, which will exacerbate migration crises. Rising seas will reduce beaches, and reduced habitat will kill many species of animals. Less of the planet will be habitable for humans. 

Oh, you mean like the famine during the Little Ice Age, like in, say, Ireland? A famine that was so bad across Europe that French nobles were trying to get the upper and middle classes to eat potatoes, a crop that was so low that even peasants didn’t want to eat them? But were easy to grow? Because there was no wheat for bread? How many civilizations were wiped out due to cold, like the Vikings in Iceland, the Mayans, and the Aztecs?

Myth #4: It’s not humans. It’s the natural changing of the climate.

There are some natural causes of climate change, i.e. volcanoes, which can put lots of sulfates into the air all at once. However, there are not enough volcanoes in the world to cause the amount of warming we’ve seen. Three-quarters of warming is anthropogenic. What can get confusing are the natural feedback loops that causes the earth to feed the flames of anthropogenic change. For example, warming causes the release of more water vapor which acts as a greenhouse gas. Also, as the ocean warms the thermohaline circulation of the oceans slows, which affects pretty much everything.

Oh, how nice, they put a percentage on it. My answer would be “prove it using the scientific method.”

There are a couple more, just more ways for liberals to ruin everything. That’s what they do. And you can bet they won’t debate, they’ll argue and scream and talk over people.

Read: You Can Talk About ‘Climate Change’ At Thanksgiving And Not Ruin It Or Something »

Posted in Barking Moonbats, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

Democrats Super Excited To Investigate Why Trump Wants U.S. Citizens Counted In Census

By William Teach November 19, 2018 – 7:21 am

You can already see the unhinged Trump Derangement Syndrome overreach in what Democrats plan to do come the next session of Congress with Democrats in control of the House

Democrats to Investigate Why Trump Wants U.S. Citizens Counted on 2020 Census

House Democrats are planning to “immediately” investigate the reason President Donald Trump wants American citizens counted on the upcoming 2020 Census.

In March, President Donald Trump’s administration announced they would put the citizenship question back on the census. It has not been included since 1950. For seven decades, all residents living in the United States have been counted on the census but have not been asked whether or not they are American citizens, making it impossible for the federal government to know the size of the citizen population versus the immigrant population.

Now, as Democrats are preparing to be the majority in the House after the midterm elections, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) — who will chair the House Oversight Committee — told Reuters he will investigate why the Trump administration has put the citizenship question back on the 2020 Census.

“There are certain things that mandate that we look at immediately,” Cummings said. “One of them is the census because that’s right around the corner.”

Cummings said the House Oversight Committee must “figure out why [the citizenship question is] there, because to be very frank with you, we have been told some untruths.”

It’s a very simple equation: people who are unlawfully present in the United States should not be counted for state apportionment nor for federal funding. You could even make an argument that those here on visas shouldn’t be counted either. If someone is here on a student visa or work visa, should they really be counted? They aren’t here more than temporarily. Those who aren’t citizens but are permanent residents or brought in as refugees should be counted, as we allowed them that status. Migrant workers should also not be counted.

Supposedly, this would change the makeup of the House as you’d be reducing the population of many coastal liberal enclaves where illegal aliens reside, and it would move to non-Democrat states. I seriously doubt it would change much, unless there are a lot more illegals than we’re being told, which is possible. It wasn’t that long ago, less than 20 years, that we were told there were over 20 million illegals. Suddenly, that number jumped down to 11 million or so. You also have them in Republican states like Texas, South Carolina, and North Carolina, as well as others.

But, do Democrats really want to do this? Hold hearings into a question that asks citizenship? That wants to exclude illegal aliens from representation? Where it would exclude members of, say, MS-13? This could be a big overreach.

Read: Democrats Super Excited To Investigate Why Trump Wants U.S. Citizens Counted In Census »

Posted in Democrats, Illegal Immigration | 17 Comments | Trackback URL
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