Ireland Becomes First Nation To Divest From Fossil Fuels (Which Government Will Still Use)

By William Teach July 13, 2018 – 10:44 am

This is supposed to be super duper crazy big news, especially for a nation that is 2nd worst for tackling Hotcoldwetdry in Europe

From the article (which is basically mirrored all over the leftist news as being super awesome news)

The Republic of Ireland will become the world’s first country to sell off its investments in fossil fuel companies, after a bill was passed with all-party support in the lower house of parliament.

The state’s €8bn national investment fund will be required to sell all investments in coal, oil, gas and peat “as soon as is practicable”, which is expected to mean within five years. Norway’s huge $1tn sovereign wealth fund has only partially divested from fossil fuels, targeting some coal companies, and is still considering its oil and gas holdings.

The fossil fuel divestment movement has grown rapidly and trillions of dollars of investment funds have been divested, including large pension funds and insurers, cities such as New York, churches and universities.

Supporters of divestment say existing fossil fuel resources are already far greater than can be burned without causing catastrophic climate change and that exploring and producing more fossil fuels is therefore morally wrong and economically risky. However, some critics argue say that remaining as shareholders and persuading fossil fuel companies to change can be more effective.

Soooooooo, the government is just selling its investments, and won’t actually stop using fossil fuels? They’ll still use them for their fossil fueled garbage collection, at airports, road repair, elected politicians and non-elected bureaucrats traveling around the country and the world? This is just silly “look at what we’re doing!!!!!” action, which really does little.

The Irish fossil fuel divestment bill was passed in the lower house of parliament on Thursday and it is expected to pass rapidly through the upper house, meaning it could become law before the end of the year. The Irish state investment fund holds more than €300m in fossil fuel investments in 150 companies.

So, for all the hyperventilating from Warmist news orgs this hasn’t actually been passed and become law? Huh.

Éamonn Meehan, executive director of international development charity Trócaire, said: “Today the Oireachtas [Irish parliament] has sent a powerful signal to the international community about the need to speed up the phase-out of fossil fuels.”

But, it’s not actually being phased out. Government are still using it, as does the private sector. Bunch of climahypocrites.

Read: Ireland Becomes First Nation To Divest From Fossil Fuels (Which Government Will Still Use) »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Brett Kavanaugh Sorta Believes In ‘Climate Change’, But, That’s Bad News Or Something

By William Teach July 13, 2018 – 7:16 am

Ever since President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, there have been many in the Warmist community who have freaked out. We get things like

Then we have Warmist Robinson Meyer at The Atlantic

Brett Kavanaugh: ‘The Earth Is Warming’
Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court affirms climate change—but that’s not necessarily good news for the EPA.

It probably isn’t surprising that Judge Brett Kavanaugh—a longtime member of the conservative movement whom President Trump nominated to the Supreme Court on Monday—has written about climate change.

What might be surprising is that he says it’s real.

“The earth is warming. Humans are contributing,” he told a federal courtroom two years ago, during a hearing about a major Barack Obama climate policy. “There is a moral imperative. There is a huge policy imperative. The pope’s involved.”

He’s even inscribed this view in his judicial opinions. “The task of dealing with global warming is urgent and important at the national and international level,” he wrote in 2013.

That’s concerning for me, but, not too much. I agree that humans are contributing, I just see it as minimal and not dangerous. But, Kavanaugh hasn’t ever seen to let his political beliefs get in the way of his rulings, excepting his belief in the Constitution. But, anyhow

Yet this is not necessarily good news for liberals. Kavanaugh has sometimes sympathized with the need for environmental protection. But because he considers global warming to be charged with a “huge policy imperative,” he’s skeptical that the Environment Protection Agency (or the executive branch) should be fighting it alone. And as a future justice, he’s likely to block the agency from doing so.

It is a portentous moment for U.S. environmental law. President Obama spent much of his last term trying to deploy the EPA—and one of its animating laws, the Clean Air Act—against the threat of climate change. The Trump administration has devoted its energy to undoing this work, and environmental groups are trying to block him.

Obama spent time passing shaky regulations that kept getting blocked in court, such as the Clean Air Act, which never went into effect to start with.

“We probably have more of a record for Kavanaugh for environmental law than we do for anyone else in recent memory,” Lazarus told me. “Roberts came from the D.C. Circuit, Scalia came from the D.C. Circuit, Ginsburg did, Thomas did—but none of them had the same number of EPA cases that Kavanaugh’s had.”

He has not been a friend of the agency, though he often appears sympathetic to it. Kavanaugh has emerged as a courteous jurist who is intensely skeptical of whether the EPA can legally regulate new environmental threats, experts told me.

And, on that record

Kavanaugh is particularly skeptical of new EPA programs. Like Scalia, he argues that the agency should only issue a new rule if Congress granted them explicit, precise rules to do so in a piece of legislation, like the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act.

Well, that’s shocking! A belief that the duly elected Legislative Branch should pass laws that are explicit to get things done, rather than massive mission creep and Executive Office agencies creating rules and regulations out of thin air? That’s totally outside the mainstream!

Adler, the conservative law professor, agreed that Kavanaugh might strike down future climate rules from the EPA.“I get that the environmental community looks at him and says, He’s going to get in the way of aggressive climate regulation unless Congress does something. And he might.”

“But if climate change is a problem, and it is; and if we should be doing something about it, which we should; then barring some massive technological breakthrough, unless and until Congress steps up to the plate, we’re kind of screwed,” he said.

And rightly so. If Warmists believe so hard, they should make an argument and attempt to pass legislation, not jam it through the EO agencies. And, show us that they really believe by changing their own lives to match their beliefs.

Read: Brett Kavanaugh Sorta Believes In ‘Climate Change’, But, That’s Bad News Or Something »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Current Affairs, Global Warming | 17 Comments | Trackback URL

Dems Aren’t Happy That GOP Will Vote On Dems “Abolish ICE” Bill

By William Teach July 13, 2018 – 6:50 am

Democrats have been running with their #AbolishICE meme for weeks now. So, what happens when their legislation is being given a vote? Shot

(The Hill) House GOP leaders plan to bring a Democratic measure calling for the abolishment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the House floor, hoping to force Democrats into a difficult vote.

The Democratic bill, introduced Thursday, would create a commission to examine ICE’s responsibilities and then recommend transferring them to other agencies.

Republicans see the growing “abolish ICE” movement as a political winner that will make at least some Democrats running in swing districts uncomfortable. (snip)

The Establishing a Humane Immigration Enforcement System Act was introduced Thursday by Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.).

They argue that ICE, which was created in 2003 as part of a new Homeland Security Department, has become “militarized” in its approach to deportations.

“President Trump’s blanket directive to round up and target all undocumented immigrants underscores the unchecked power which ICE has used to terrorize our communities,” Pocan said in a statement. “From conducting raids at garden centers and meatpacking plants to targeting families outside churches and schools, the president is using ICE as a mass-deportation force to rip apart the moral fabric of our nation.”

The main point of Congress is to vote on legislation, is it not? Chaser

(The Hill) A group of Democrats who introduced legislation to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said they will vote against the measure if GOP leadership follows through with their vow to bring it to the House floor.

Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) released a statement Thursday accusing GOP leaders of exploiting the legislation for political gain after leadership confirmed it planned to hold a vote.

While the Democratic lawmakers said they plan to vote against their own measure – which would create a commission to examine ICE’s responsibilities and then recommend transferring them to other agencies – they said they welcome the opportunity for debate.

“We know Speaker Ryan is not serious about passing our ‘Establishing a Humane Immigration Enforcement System Act,’ so members of Congress, advocacy groups, and impacted communities will not engage in this political stunt,” the Democrats said in a joint statement.

This reminds me of the many times that Republicans forced a vote on many things that Democrats were pushing, only to have it called a stunt, such as when Mitch McConnell forced the Senate to vote on Obama’s extreme budgets, and Democrats voted against them. Dingy Harry Reid called it a “stunt” to have to actually vote. In this case, Democrats never thought that the GOP would call their bluff using legislation Democrats wrote.

Read: Dems Aren’t Happy That GOP Will Vote On Dems “Abolish ICE” Bill »

Posted in Democrats, Illegal Immigration | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Surprise: Coastal Shorelines Mostly Stable Or Growing

By William Teach July 12, 2018 – 5:01 pm

You know how climate doom from Other People using fossil fueled vehicles, buy products, using air conditioning, taking showers longer than 2 minutes, etc and so on is supposed to cause sea level doom? Never mind

(NoTricksZone) Accelerating sea level rise due to global warming is supposed to eat away at the shorelines across the globe. However a recent paper published in the journal Nature here authored by a team scientists led by Arjen Luijendijk found that some 75% of the world’s sandy shorelines are stable or growing!

An analysis of satellite-derived shoreline data indicates that 24% of the world’s sandy beaches are eroding at rates exceeding 0.5 m/yr, but 28% are accreting and 48% are stable.

Also erosion rates exceed 5 m/yr along 4% of the sandy shoreline and are greater than 10 m/yr for 2% of the global sandy shoreline.

According to the paper, the application of an automated shoreline detection method to the sandy shorelines resulted in a global dataset of shoreline change rates for the 33 year period 1984–2016.

The scientists also found that Australia and Africa are the only continents for which net erosion (−0.20 m/yr and −0.07 m/yr respectively) is found, with all other continents showing net accretion.

What does all this mean

[Aftab Alam Khan at the Department of Geology, University of Dhaka in Bangladesh] added that the prediction of 4–6.6 ft sea level rise in the next 91 years between 2009 and 2100 is “highly erroneous”!

It means that things on Earth change, sometimes quickly, sometimes not, and that this Holocene warm period is nothing to be concerned about. It’s primarily natural.

Of course, members of the Cult of Climastrology will say “it might not be happening yet, but it’s coming! Doom soon!”

Read: Surprise: Coastal Shorelines Mostly Stable Or Growing »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach July 12, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible, electricity sucking smartphone, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is America’s Watchtower, with a post on Rod Rosenstein’s unusual request on Brett Kavenaugh.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 21 Comments | Trackback URL

NY Times Wonders If ‘Climate Change’ Has Something To Do With Thailand Floods

By William Teach July 12, 2018 – 10:30 am

In the wake of the kids being trapped in the cave, you just knew someone had to run something like this. In this case, it’s the NY Times’ Nadja Popovich and Kendra Pierre-louis, who want to remind us that no one’s suggesting that the kids being trapped was climate change, it’s just climate change

Does Climate Change Have Anything to Do With Floods in Thailand?

After 12 members of a youth soccer team and their coach were trapped in the Tham Luang Cave in northern Thailand nearly three weeks ago, their plight, and then their rescue, captured the world’s attention.

By now, it’s well known that their predicament was caused by rising floodwaters in the cave. What is less known is that the pattern of precipitation that ensnared them is in keeping with broader changes to the region’s seasonal monsoon that researchers have attributed to climate change.

“Over the South Asian landmass, we’ve seen that extreme rainfall events have become more frequent,” said Amit Tandon, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth who studies ocean systems.

No one is suggesting that climate change itself was responsible for trapping the boys in the cave. Brief downpours have always been common during Thailand’s wet season, which runs from late May to early October. Periods of a week or two of relatively heavy rainfall are punctuated by drier periods.

See? No one is suggesting. They’re just hintimating. Climaggesting?

The alternating dry and wet periods are called the intraseasonal oscillation, said Arnold L. Gordon, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. That variation has always happened, unrelated to climate change. But what has changed in recent years is that those wet periods have been wetter.

“It’s likely climate change, in the sense that there’s more moisture in the air,” Dr. Gordon said. Warmer air can hold more moisture, and “when the air has more moisture in it, you would get wetter wet bands and drier dry bands,” he said.

Which is not proof of man-caused climate change, just that climate changes. Which it always does.

Flash floods were known to be a danger in the cave, and a sign at the entrance warned against entering in the rainy season. But the strongest rains normally begin in July, so the boys and their coach may have been caught off guard when they ventured inside the relatively dry cave on June 23. Though the total June rainfall in the area, 9.6 inches, was only slightly higher than average, five of those inches fell between June 21 and 28, according to Eric Leister, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather. The resulting floodwaters trapped the team and complicated rescue efforts.

And taken altogether, it sure looks like ‘climate change’ is being blamed, does it not?

Read: NY Times Wonders If ‘Climate Change’ Has Something To Do With Thailand Floods »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | Comments Off on NY Times Wonders If ‘Climate Change’ Has Something To Do With Thailand Floods | Trackback URL

Landmark Settlement Is A Nightmare For Gun Grabbers, Especially On “Assault Rifles”

By William Teach July 12, 2018 – 7:36 am

This is bad news for the anti-gun crowd (who often have firearms themselves (see Alyssa Milano’s husband) and/or armed protection, at times weapons that the average American is banned from having), but not as bad as being portrayed, except for one thing

A LANDMARK LEGAL SHIFT OPENS PANDORA’S BOX FOR DIY GUNS

FIVE YEARS AGO, 25-year-old radical libertarian Cody Wilson stood on a remote central Texas gun range and pulled the trigger on the world’s first fully 3-D-printed gun. When, to his relief, his plastic invention fired a .380-caliber bullet into a berm of dirt without jamming or exploding in his hands, he drove back to Austin and uploaded the blueprints for the pistol to his website, Defcad.com.

He’d launched the site months earlier along with an anarchist video manifesto, declaring that gun control would never be the same in an era when anyone can download and print their own firearm with a few clicks. In the days after that first test-firing, his gun was downloaded more than 100,000 times. Wilson made the decision to go all in on the project, dropping out of law school at the University of Texas, as if to confirm his belief that technology supersedes law.

The law caught up. Less than a week later, Wilson received a letter from the US State Department demanding that he take down his printable-gun blueprints or face prosecution for violating federal export controls. Under an obscure set of US regulations known as the International Trade in Arms Regulations (ITAR), Wilson was accused of exporting weapons without a license, just as if he’d shipped his plastic gun to Mexico rather than put a digital version of it on the internet. He took Defcad.com offline, but his lawyer warned him that he still potentially faced millions of dollars in fines and years in prison simply for having made the file available to overseas downloaders for a few days. “I thought my life was over,” Wilson says.

Instead, Wilson has spent the last years on an unlikely project for an anarchist: Not simply defying or skirting the law but taking it to court and changing it. In doing so, he has now not only defeated a legal threat to his own highly controversial gunsmithing project. He may have also unlocked a new era of digital DIY gunmaking that further undermines gun control across the United States and the world—another step toward Wilson’s imagined future where anyone can make a deadly weapon at home with no government oversight.

As you can guess, Mr. Wilson won his suit.

Two months ago, the Department of Justice quietly offered Wilson a settlement to end a lawsuit he and a group of co-plaintiffs have pursued since 2015 against the United States government. Wilson and his team of lawyers focused their legal argument on a free speech claim: They pointed out that by forbidding Wilson from posting his 3-D-printable data, the State Department was not only violating his right to bear arms but his right to freely share information. By blurring the line between a gun and a digital file, Wilson had also successfully blurred the lines between the Second Amendment and the First.

This has caused the gun grabbers to freak out, because it means anyone can download the “code”, which is considered Free Speech now, and manufacture a firearm using 3D technology. You know, something very few of us have access to. We’d need parts and machinery and stuff, so, it’s not as easy as it is being portrayed.

Furthermore, just because anyone can download the instructions now as free speech, it doesn’t mean that state government cannot pass laws (in some cases, more laws) about these types of firearms to restrict the manufacture of them, require serial numbers, registration, and so forth. And criminals will do what criminals do, so, once the blueprints were out there, nothing was going to stop that. But, the average criminal, gang banger, etc, do not have access to 3D machines, either.

Here’s the really important part of the settlement

As part of the settlement, the government acknowledges that “non-automatic firearms up to .50-caliber” such as the popular AR-15 and other semi-autos, are not “military” in nature, which Alan Gottlieb with the SAF said is a huge win. “For years, anti-gunners have contended that modern semi-automatic sport-utility rifles are so-called ‘weapons of war,’ and with this settlement, the government has acknowledged they are nothing of the sort,” he said in a statement.

The gun grabbers will still try and portray them as “weapons of war”, because they found a talking point, and they rarely give them up. But, per the US Department Of Justice, they aren’t. Not that they ever were. What dummy carries a semi-automatic rifle to war anymore?

Read: Landmark Settlement Is A Nightmare For Gun Grabbers, Especially On “Assault Rifles” »

Posted in 2nd Amendment | Comments Off on Landmark Settlement Is A Nightmare For Gun Grabbers, Especially On “Assault Rifles” | Trackback URL

“News Investigation”: Brett Kavanaugh Used Credit Cards To Buy Baseball Tickets

By William Teach July 12, 2018 – 7:12 am

The Washington Post’s Amy Brittain has did a big, big investigation (she read a few documents, most likely provided by some hyper-leftwing outlet) of Brett Kavanaugh, and found something that should totally end his chances to be on the Supreme Court

From the article

Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh incurred tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt buying baseball tickets over the past decade and at times reported liabilities that could have exceeded the value of his cash accounts and investment assets, according to a review of Kavanaugh’s financial disclosures and information provided by the White House.

White House spokesman Raj Shah told The Washington Post that Kavanaugh built up the debt by buying Washington Nationals season tickets and tickets for playoff games for himself and a “handful” of friends. Shah said some of the debts were also for home improvements.

In 2016, Kavanaugh reported having between $60,000 and $200,000 in debt accrued over three credit cards and a loan. Each credit card held between $15,000 and $50,000 in debt, and a Thrift Savings Plan loan was between $15,000 and $50,000.

ZOMG, that’s horrible! Who does this? Nobody puts things like this on their credit cards and takes out loans!!!!!!

The credit card debts and loan were either paid off or fell below the reporting requirements in 2017, according to the filings, which do not require details on the nature or source of such payments. Shah told The Post that Kavanaugh’s friends reimbursed him for their share of the baseball tickets and that the judge has since stopped purchasing the season tickets.

This article seriously continues on for 22 paragraphs, which, in fairness, features many which are just one sentence. Still and all, what is this rubbish? It was seriously in the “investigations” section of the WP. It wouldn’t be there if they didn’t think it wouldn’t help in derailing Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Baseball tickets.

Really, this is the same Credentialed Media that refused to investigate virtually anything about Obama. No one really knows anything about his college days. They avoided anything about Obama regarding his relationship with the unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. How about that birth certificate? That’s not a Birther thing, that’s a “the media spent a lot of time wondering if McCain was eligible because he was born at a military base in the Panama Canal zone” thing. The media could offer up soft hit-jobs on that, they could “we’re just wondering” about McCain having an affair, news that was totally unverified, but, they couldn’t bring themselves to investigate Obama’s drug use. They wanted ever medical record on McCain, then wanted more, but were fine with one-pager from Obama.

They freaked over Mitt Romney giving a kid a haircut back in high school as a prank, but didn’t care less about getting to the bottom of things like Fast and Furious and Benghazi. So, yeah, baseball tickets. This is what they do, and they wonder why no one trusts them.

Read: “News Investigation”: Brett Kavanaugh Used Credit Cards To Buy Baseball Tickets »

Posted in Barking Moonbats, Wonky Media | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

Woman Claims She Had “Handmaids Tale” Moment Dealing With US Customers

By William Teach July 11, 2018 – 4:11 pm

Liberals love running stories and linking them to “A Handmaid’s Tale”, eh? Here’s Brianna Sacks at Buzzfeed

This Mom Said She Had A “Handmaid’s Tale” Moment Having To Prove Her Daughter Was Her Child

After nearly 10 hours of flying Sunday, Sylvia Acosta was exhausted and dreaming about a cup of coffee as she stood in line for customs at Dallas–Fort Worth airport. Her daughter, Sybonae Castillo, was relieved to be back in Texas and craving Hot Cheetos. But instead of lounging in the food court, the 50-year-old found herself fighting to prove that her 15-year-old was, indeed, her child and explain her decision not to change her name when she married.

Calling it a “Handmaid’s Tale” moment, Acosta recounted what she described as a “violating and demeaning” encounter with a Customs and Border Protection agent, who she accused of improperly detaining and berating her because she and her daughter had different last names.

“He looked up from the documents and was like, ‘Are you her mother?’ And I said yes and he then asked, ‘Why don’t you have the same last name?'” Acosta, who has a doctorate degree and chose to keep her professional name, recalled.

“I explained that I decided to keep my name and not change it when I got married because that is the name I had built my career on and people knew me by that, and I went on and on about that,” she said.

Unconvinced, Acosta said, the agent asked if she had any other proof that Sybonae, who was standing beside her, was her daughter, such as a birth certificate or a note from the father, citing concerns of human trafficking.

She kinda understood, but was still shocked! Especially when she claims that the Customs agent “told me my life would have been easier if I had taken my husband’s last name.”

Acosta, who is the CEO of the YWCA CEO of the El Paso branch (Buzzfeed offered the correction), a nonprofit geared toward eliminating racism and empowering women, found herself explaining that she had divorced Sybonae’s father, remarried, and still retained her birth name.

Well, that’s rather ironic, isn’t? She just haaaaaappppppens to be a social justice warrior. Huh. And she also claims the agent asked if she had a divorce decree. She claims she was humiliated and patronized and they were condescending. There’s just one teensy tiny problem, way down in the article (at a point most people would have moved on and sent Outraged tweets and stuff)

Customs and Border Protection, however, refuted Acosta’s account and contended that the agent had been following protocol.

The agency “has reviewed the audio and video of the encounter between a CBP officer and a woman traveling with her daughter, and found that the video does not support this claim,” a CBP spokesperson said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.

This was also explained to the Dallas Morning News, which starts their article out on this very point. The Fox News article goes even further

“U. S. Customs and Border Protection has reviewed the audio and video of the encounter between a CBP officer and a woman travelling with her daughter, and found that the video does not support the claim as it has been reported. The audio and video prove that there weren’t any inappropriate questions discussed,” a spokesperson wrote in a response to Acosta.

And it looks like the Facebook post, which received 16,000 shares, has now been either deleted or set to private.

Read: Woman Claims She Had “Handmaids Tale” Moment Dealing With US Customers »

Posted in Special Snowflake Syndrome | 11 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach July 11, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is a super bright world from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Other McCain, with a post on Dems trying to fundraise off of Kavanaugh.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 1 Comment | Trackback URL
Pirate's Cove