If All You See…

By William Teach June 8, 2016 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible fossil fueled vehicle causing deep water, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Theo Spark, with a post wondering if Hillary is bat guano crazy

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Say, What’ll It Take For Climate Plan To Succeed?

By William Teach June 8, 2016 – 10:20 am

It’s a good question, asked by the CBC’s Mike Crawley (from a Warmist point of view)

(CBC) Premier Kathleen Wynne’s showpiece action plan for tackling climate change will be unveiled today and it will have an impact on the way every single Ontarian consumes energy, whether through transportation, home heating, or manufacturing.

Wynne is making the fight to reduce carbon emissions a pillar of her premiership. Her climate change action plan is so sweeping, it can’t help but become a crucial ballot question when Ontarians decide whether to re-elect the Liberals in 2018.

And everyone will be dragged along whether they care or not. What will it take the plan to succeed?

1. Actually reduce carbon emissions

The whole point of an action plan to tackle climate change is to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change. The Wynne government has not only agreed to specific emission reduction targets at an international conference, it has enshrined the targets in law.

The transportation and buildings sector will supposedly be the most on the hook. And, certainly, the energy sector. Which means higher costs for citizens. But, hey, don’t expect this to be one of those revenue neutral programs, where the fees/taxes/penalties put on everything will be refunded to citizens. Nope. They’ll use it for other CO2 reducing programs.

2. Not raise costs too drastically

Wynne and the Liberals are telling Ontarians the climate change plan will cost the average household just $13 extra per month. There’s plenty of skepticism about this analysis. By contrast, if you take the Liberals’ projection that cap and trade will generate $1.9 billion a year for the treasury, and assume those costs are passed on to the province’s five million households, that works out to $31 a month each.

With the average hydro bill in Ontario already up nearly 40 per cent since 2010, new price hikes to fuel your car and heat your home won’t win the climate change action plan a lot of friends. The success of the plan will depend on whether it makes too many people feel they’re paying too much.

Good luck with that. When has a government program actually come close to projections? The vast majority are way, way over.

It also has to appeal to big business and the little guy, as the third point. Of course, this is really about politics

4. Help the Liberals win the next election

Tackling climate change polls well with voters right now. It’s something most people say they want done. But whether Ontarians will actually vote for a party because it’s willing to take strong action on climate change remains to be seen. It’s also an open question about whether the Liberals are truly taking strong action.

At the end of the day, climate change is always about politics, not science. Will Ontarians respond positively? Passing all sorts of Hotcoldwetdry rules and laws worked out beyond poorly for politicians in Australia. Will it work out well in Ontario? Will citizens appreciate the ever rising costs? And here’s something to watch for: stretching the pain down the road a bit, in order for the Liberals to win the next election and become entrenched before the pain truly hits.

Read: Say, What’ll It Take For Climate Plan To Succeed? »

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Good News: Obama’s New Retirement Rules Will Cost You More Money

By William Teach June 8, 2016 – 8:15 am

Wise government would institute rules that protect people without causing pain to those being “protected”, nor would it go overboard in creating problems where they did not exist. Obviously, government has often done a poor job of this, none more than the Obama administration, which doesn’t seem to understand “restraint”

(Kiplinger) A controversial new rule issued by the U.S. Department of Labor aims to improve the quality of advice that investors receive regarding their retirement accounts. The rule requires that financial professionals who give advice on retirement accounts act as fiduciaries for their clients, meaning that they must put their clients’ best interests ahead of their own financial gain, disclosing their forms of compensation and any conflicts of interest. Here’s what you can

1. What’s behind this new rule? Today, brokers are generally not required to put their clients’ interests first when recommending investments. Rather, they merely need to suggest products that are “suitable” for their clients based on the clients’ goals, age, risk tolerance and so forth. By contrast, registered investment advisers, another class of financial professionals, are always required to put clients’ interests first, even though these advisers provide exactly the same services as brokers (whether someone is a broker or an adviser depends on how they are licensed and regulated). Because of that, it can be difficult for the average investor to glean whether a financial professional is offering objective advice with no financial interest or is acting more like a salesperson.

Now, is it a bad idea to put financial advisors on the hook in this manner? No. Of course, people right now have the option to use brokers whose model is to act as fiduciaries. A federal rule might be a step too far, but, it’s not necessarily one of those bad Big Government requirements. And, it will protect people’s retirement accounts from seriously bad advice.

Of course, it could see people doing more paperwork. And then there’s this

As the saying goes, if you like your financial advisor, you should be able to keep your financial advisor. But that’s not the likely future for millions of families now that the Department of Labor (DOL) has finalized its proposed “fiduciary rule” – the Obama administration’s regulatory onslaught on retirement saving advice. Hiding behind the high-minded notion of a “fiduciary” standard that purports to put customers’ interests first is a regulation that is expensive and onerous, and not a favor to investors in the end.

Most, 86.2 percent, of the $7.3 trillion in retirement assets is in commission-based accounts. That means that instead of paying high fees directly to the adviser for his or her advice, the adviser is taking a smaller fee that is a portion of the gains in the account. When DOL’s fiduciary rule is enacted, each of those accounts – totaling $6.3 trillion – will be moved to a fee-based account. Even with a fee of just 1.2 percent that’s $75.6 billion in duplicative fees on American retirement accounts, or about $1500 per household. This cost is an unneeded tax on people saving for retirement who should not be forced into fee-based accounts that they don’t want.

So, it could cost those investing for retirement more money for less growth.

As it turns out, these may be the lucky “winners.” A majority (51 percent) of retirement accounts have balances less than $25,000, and, for small funds, it will simply make no sense to pay the fees. These retirement savers will be cut off entirely from retirement saving advice.

And it makes it more difficult to do things like roll over a 401(k) when one leaves a job.

The fiduciary rule is a mistake. At best it is a well-intentioned overreach in which the desire to improve the investment advice for a few means no advice for the masses. At worst, it is a classic case of burdensome, top-down regulation that ends up harming the very consumers that it is purported to help. In either event, it is a step in the wrong direction.

Just another case of Obama creating other problems while attempting to “solve” something.

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NY Times Thinks There Needs To Be A New Grand Old Party

By William Teach June 8, 2016 – 7:49 am

I love when non-Republicans advise the GOP on how to act. In this case, it is resident “radical Centrist” Thomas L. Freidman, who, despite being a self avowed “radical centrist”, tends to take the side of the extreme Left more often. Regardless, he does actually make a few good points

Dump the G.O.P. for a Grand New Party
If a party could declare moral bankruptcy, today’s Republican Party would be in Chapter 11.

This party needs to just shut itself down and start over — now. Seriously, someone please start a New Republican Party! (snip)

And we know just how little they are attached to any principles, because today’s Republican Party’s elders have told us so by (with a few notable exceptions) being so willing to throw their support behind a presidential candidate whom they know is utterly ignorant of policy, has done no homework, has engaged in racist attacks on a sitting judge, has mocked a disabled reporter, has impugned an entire religious community, and has tossed off ignorant proposals for walls, for letting allies go it alone and go nuclear and for overturning trade treaties, rules of war and nuclear agreements in ways that would be wildly destabilizing if he took office.

Despite that, all top G.O.P. leaders say they will still support Donald Trump — even if he’s dabbled in a “textbook definition” of racism, as House Speaker Paul Ryan described it — because he will sign off on their agenda and can do only limited damage given our checks and balances.

He has a good point. The GOP has long abandoned principle for pure pragmatism. One must have some pragmatism in politics, because not ever candidate or party will jibe perfectly. What does the GOP stand for now? I disagree on Trump’s “racist” statement: it’s not racism. Mexican is not a race. It was bigoted, and, more relevantly, just a person being a jerk. As for Muslims, perhaps they should work to reduce the ever-growing population of extremists within their own ranks. Trump doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp of policy on most things. It’s all based on soundbites.

This is exactly why so many Republican voters opted for Trump in the first place. They intuited that the only thing these G.O.P. politicians were interested in was holding onto their seats in office — and they were right. It made voters so utterly cynical that many figured, Why not inflict Trump on them? It’s all just a con game anyway. And at least Trump sticks it to all of those politically correct liberals. And anyway, governing doesn’t matter — only attitude.

Again, a good point. The GOP barely stood up to Obama. They aren’t being fiscally responsible. They assailed Ted Cruz and a few others for attempting to instituted financial sanity. Too much get along go along. You know the story, no need to regurgitate it. Here’s the kicker, though. See that (snip) in the first excerpt? Let’s start with Freidman’s third paragraph, to see what kind of GOP we need

America needs a healthy two-party system. America needs a healthy center-right party to ensure that the Democrats remain a healthy center-left party. America needs a center-right party ready to offer market-based solutions to issues like climate change. America needs a center-right party that will support common-sense gun laws. America needs a center-right party that will support common-sense fiscal policy. America needs a center-right party to support both free trade and aid to workers impacted by it. America needs a center-right party that appreciates how much more complicated foreign policy is today, when you have to manage weak and collapsing nations, not just muscle strong ones.

Freidman loves his centeredness schtick. He wrote a book on it. He’s correct that we need a GOP to support free trade and fiscal sanity. But, climate change? Really? What he means by “market based solutions” is Government. That’s not the free market. By common sense gun laws he means lots of infringement on the Constitutional Rights of law abiding citizens.

But, where is the notion of a center-left Democratic Party? If we need a new GOP, we need a new Donkey Party, as they’ve left the plantation for massive Big Government. It’s not really left leaning on the political scale. It’s way, way to the right. The GOP is center right. At times, it veers into center left. The problem here is that the center has shifted. The real center would have a party that supports limited rule. Limited involvement with our private lives. Limited involvement with our economic lives. And, as part of what is American Classical Liberalism, limited federal government, leaving everything except those powers delegated to the federal government to the States and The People.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Gender Confused Boy Allowed On Track Team, Knocks Out Biological Girl

By William Teach June 7, 2016 – 5:30 pm

Let me throw this proposition out to all the gender confused supporters: what if your  daughter was really good at something in school, and should have made the team/club/etc, except a TG boy took the spot. Oh, and is allowed to shower and change with your underage daughter. Are you good with that? What if a biological boy/girl who “identifies” as the opposite biological sex (BS) competes and takes a position/scholarship/etc meant for a specific BS away from your child of that BS? You good with that? (Via Hot Air)

(KTVA)  Haines runner Nattaphon Wangyot qualified for the girls 1-2-3A 100-meter and 200-meter finals Friday afternoon at the high school state track and field meet, but unlike her competitors, she was born with male anatomy.

Transgender equality has become a hot topic of discussion around the country, and Alaska is no exception. The Alaska Schools Activities Association recently implemented a policy to allow individual school districts to decide if a transgender athlete can compete in a sport as the gender they identify with.

In all, 16 runners qualified for state. Saskia Harrison, a runner for Fairbanks’ Hutchison High School, just missed the cut with a time of 14.11 seconds, just behind fellow Hutchison runner Emma Daniels.

“‘I’m glad that this person is comfortable with who they are and they’re able to be happy in who they are, but I don’t think it’s competitively completely 100-percent fair,” Harrison told KTVA.

At the Hot Air piece, Larry O’Connor notes

As everyone on the Left fall all over themselves to extend every possible right to transgender individuals, this case forces the question that always pops up when one groups’ “rights” conflict with another’s. Whose rights win? Whose rights are more important?

Wangyot ran the 100 meter trial in 13.14 seconds, which appears to be 5th best. In the accompanying video, at either link we hear a young lady say “I don’t know what’s politically correct to say, but in my opinion your gender is what you’re born with. It’s the DNA. Genetically a guy has more muscle mass than a girl, and if he’s racing against a girl, he may have an advantage.” What if a gender confused guy decided he wanted to play in the WNBA? Or a women’s soccer team? A gymnast in the Olympics? Supply your own example. When it’s your own child, family member, friend, it suddenly will become personal for Liberals, and they’ll see the problems their own idiocy causes for Other People in their own lives.

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If All You See…

By William Teach June 7, 2016 – 1:00 pm

…is a classic fossil fueled vehicle that surely doesn’t integrate modern GHG limiting tech, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Lonely Conservative, with a post wondering if Trump is trying to lose this campaign.

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Say, What’s The Hotcoldwetdry-Hurricane Connection?

By William Teach June 7, 2016 – 10:30 am

Hurricane season is upon us, and, of course, virtually every storm will be either blamed or linked to ‘climate change’. Or both. Because that’s what Warmists do. Tropical systems have been happening long before mankind started the Industrial Revolution and found fossil fuels. Heck, long before mankind. Despite being utterly wrong in their prognostications, Warmists will continue their duckspeak

What’s the hurricane-climate change connection?

As hurricane season kicks off along the Atlantic coast (June 1 to November 30), it’s a good time to think about the connection between hurricanes and climate change.

As the climate warms, hurricanes are projected to get stronger and wetter. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the IPCC modeling, we are likely to experience an increase in hurricane storm intensity, with a doubling of category 4 and 5 hurricanes over the course of the 21st century, while at the same time a decrease in frequency of category 1 to 3 storms. It is projected that storm intensity will increase 2 percent – 11 percent and there will substantially higher rainfall rates than present-day hurricanes—perhaps 10 percent-15 percent more rainfall within 100 km of the storm center. Overall, it is projected that hurricane damages will increase by 30 percent by 2100, without even taking into account future sea level rise.

Let’s go back in time, shall we? After the big season of 2005, the prognostication was that 2005 would be the “new normal.” Almost immediately, landfalling hurricanes dried up. And the US has only been hit by 3 named storms since, of which two could be argued weren’t even hurricanes at landfall.

But, Warmists went on to prognosticate that while hurricanes would be fewer, they would be bigger and more powerful. But, bigger hurricanes dried up. The last major hurricane to make landfall on the continental US was Wilma in October 2005.

So, then they started saying that ‘climate change’ was steering tropical systems away from the US and Caribbean, and reducing their power and formation.

Now we’re on to “bigger and wetter”. Way in the future. When no one will remember the prognostication. And no one can actually prove it.

Clearly, the stakes are high for the Atlantic coast when it comes to the impacts of climate change. As we prepare for yet another hurricane season with basic emergency preparedness, we should also press for meaningful action on climate change to minimize future catastrophe. When the next big hurricane strikes, let’s not have to wish we would have acted on climate change sooner.

Did ‘climate change’ have anything to do with the great Galveston hurricane of 1900? Hurricane Camille happened during cooling in 1969. Warmists will never give up a good meme, good duckspeak, no matter how unscientific it is

https://twitter.com/WilliamTeach/status/739793135149146112

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Bummer: No One Is Lobbying For ‘Climate Change’

By William Teach June 7, 2016 – 8:01 am

So says a guy who uses lots of fossil fuels to travel to and fro as a sitting US Senator. We are speaking of uner-Alarmist Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I), who still refuses to answer the question “have you given up use of fossil fuels and made your life carbon neutral?” Here he is in Forbes, whining as usual

In a recent week in Washington, I took lobbying meetings with TechNet, the lumber industry and the property casualty insurance industry. Let me give you a glimpse inside these meetings, because they help explain why so little progress is being made in Congress on climate change.

TechNet represents the technology giants like Apple and Google, among others, and also an array of clean and renewable energy companies. The tech companies tend to be forward-leaning on climate change and the interest of the clean energy sector is obvious. This group is big and powerful enough to lobby us in bulk, so there was a group meeting with many Senators in a big room. TechNet brought glossy materials listing the issues on which they wanted Congressional action. Climate change was not on the list.

A day or two later, two lumber dealers came to see me, and I stepped out of a hearing to talk with them. The western lumber industry is losing millions of acres of pine forest to the pine beetle, which thanks to climate change is now marauding into latitudes and altitudes from which cold temperatures had kept it before. The eastern hardwoods industry complains of its valuable stock being hard to regrow in warming northeastern forests. The lumber guys had a less glossy handout with their list of concerns for Congress. Again, climate change was not one of them.

Then the property casualty insurance folks met with me in my office. They had a list of issues to go over with me, too. Despite the fact that this industry writes the checks when extreme weather destroys homes and property, and despite rising claims as climate change and storms and damage all worsen, their list also did not include action on climate change.

Skipping past the Warmist duckspeak on pine beetles, extreme weather, etc, and the fact that Whitehouse offers zero proof that the climatic changes in the Modern Warm Period are caused mostly/solely by mankind, is it any wonder they businesses do not care? For one thing, it would require that these companies put their own money on the line, and change the behavior of their companies.

I asked them all, if you are not going to lobby on climate change, who do you think will? If TechNet with its green energy firms, the lumber industry with its climate challenges, and the property casualty insurance industry paying for storm damage, all come to Washington and don’t even have climate change on their lobbying portfolio, what do they expect from Congress?

Washington’s dirty secret is that even the American companies that are really good on sustainability put net zero effort into lobbying Congress on climate change.

Why is this a secret? In the Real World, most do not care enough about the issue. It consistently ranks last or near last on lists of American concerns.

Throughout the American corporate sector, corporate leaders I’ve talked to about this problem uniformly assert fear of retribution as a reason to stand clear. The Republican Party is now so intertwined with the fossil fuel industry, and so dependent on it for “dark money,” that fossil fuel interests can deploy Republican politicians to exact retribution for lobbying on climate.

Oh, OK. Can we see proof of this, Sheldon? Even just one example?

In my experience, plenty of Republican members of Congress would like to get to work on climate change, for reasons of principle, or because of constituent demands, or from simple fear of being appallingly wrong on a vital issue. But their immediate calculation is that the fossil fuel industry will punish them if they dare, and they won’t have a single trustworthy friend at their side. This is not an unreasonable fear after Citizens United, with groups like the Koch Brothers’ network very publicly wielding a $750 million political spending cudgel, and warning of “political peril” to those who cross them.

In fact, retribution is almost solely a function of Democrats, who want to punish people for “Wrongthink”, whether it be on climate change, the gender confused, illegal immigration, abortion on demand, or a host of other issues. Republicans just tend to ignore stupid ideas. Like anthropogenic climate change. Especially when those who push it the hardest refuse to make significant changes in their own lives.

Read: Bummer: No One Is Lobbying For ‘Climate Change’ »

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Global Autarky Is Totally Dangerous Or Something

By William Teach June 7, 2016 – 7:31 am

The age of autarky is upon us, folks. And, per the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell, it’s totally dangerous!

The dangerous new age of global autarky

The age of autarky is again upon us.

Britain, in two weeks, will vote on whether to leave the European Union, that great postwar project to promote both peace and prosperity.

No matter that economists have almost uniformly warned that a possible “Brexit” would devastate the British economy, with an estimated cost of approximately $6,000 per British household. Disregard news that markets are already freaking out about the consequences for the pound and the overall financial sector; that high-skilled talent has become skittish about moving to the British isles, whose relationship to the E.U. in a post-Brexit world is as yet unknown; and that foreign clients have begun suspending or delaying contractswith British companies.

Of course, there are plenty who say that the split would be good for Britain economically. It’s not like trade will just go away. And, so far, quite a few European nation in the EU are a mess. Greece and Italy are two that are barely surviving. GDP in the EU is low. Real unemployment is high. But, wait, what is autarky?

  1. self-sufficiency, independence; specifically :  national economic self-sufficiency and independence
  2. a policy of establishing a self-sufficient and independent national economy

Kinda helpful to understand the definition, wouldn’t you say? The funny thing is that Progressives often complain about globalization, especially when it comes to Big Banks, Big Companies, and ‘climate change.’ On the flip side they want open borders (except within their own communities, of course)

Other E.U. exit portmanteaus — Grexit, Itexit, Spexit — speckle the headlines. Within Spain, Catalonians have once again been agitating for independence. Secessionists in the Flanders region of Belgium have reawakened. Even within Britain itself, Scotland not so long ago held a referendum to disunite from the United Kingdom.

You also have Russia doing its Russia thing, and

Likewise China, once seen as moving toward greater economic and cultural openness, has lately taken a more nationalist, xenophobic and protectionist approach. This spring the government even launched a propaganda campaign warning citizens not to get too cozy with handsome foreigners.

How dare China put China first!! But, you know this is all leading somewhere else, right?

And of course here at home in the United States, all three of our remaining major-party presidential candidates — Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton — have embraced anti-trade talk.

Of the three, Trump has offered the most isolationist, nationalistic vision, themed “America First.” To Trump, trade and diplomacy are never Pareto-improving — that is, making everyone better off without making anyone worse off — but always zero-sum. He not only laughs off the dire consequences of a trade war, he also actively stokes xenophobia at home and advocates large-scale disengagement from our allies abroad.

Yeah, it was working towards an assault on Trump. America First! How horrible!

Around the world, citizens are ignoring the improvements in living standards that have resulted from centuries of exchanges of ideas, products and customs, and are instead clamoring for more seclusion.

Yet, it’s not seclusion. Ms. Rampell utterly misses the point that there is nothing wrong with putting your own nation first, nor that some want sovereignty for their nation/region. International trade will not end. Nor will the exchange of ideas. As for customs, liberals are constantly complaining about “cultural appropriation”, so, does the exchange of customs matter?

Earlier precedents for deliberate pursuit of autarky include Burma under its military junta, as well as a host of mid-20th-century dictatorial leaders (Spain under Franco, Italy under Mussolini, Germany under Hitler, China and its Cultural Revolution under Mao).

You just knew there would be a Hitler mention, didn’t you? But, for the most part, no one is calling for isolation, the premise of the argument. They are simply calling for putting the needs of their own country first. What’s the problem with that? Oh, right, Liberals want to spread Other People’s wealth. And they so rarely seem to like the country they live in.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

Read: Global Autarky Is Totally Dangerous Or Something »

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Shockingly, Warmists See No Reason To Teach Both Sides

By William Teach June 6, 2016 – 3:32 pm

If you recall, the Portland, Oregon schools decided to go full bore Warmist and censor all opposing views on climate change, because they’re super into learning and knowledge and stuff. Warmists Dave Appell at Oregon Live is cool with this

The first responsibility of any school is to teach what is known. Man’s influence on climate is by now well-established, as the board notes. Climate contrarians, despite all their bluster, have never put forth an alternate scientific explanation for modern warming that explains what we see.

If I were a Portland public school teacher, I would happily give my pupils a good, long hard look at the contrarian’s positions on global warming — and show them exactly why they are full of holes, of tricks and poor science that don’t agree with observations, and why man’s emission of greenhouse gases are a far superior hypothesis to explain what’s going on.

Because, after all, the vast majority of scientists now accept man-made climate change, and they do so because it agrees with and explains observations.

My favorite new word: duckspeak!

But it is the rare high school student who will know enough science — enough thermodynamics, enough math, including advanced calculus, and enough quantum physics — to definitively decide for herself that man is the cause of modern warming. There are, I think, simply too many subtle and deep scientific points in the argument.

No problem, Warmists who don’t understand it will Tell You What To Think and Believe.

I don’t know if science teachers have enough preparation time to make this kind of argument. But I hope they don’t feel it necessary to “present both sides.” Because the science falls strongly to one side — the man-made one.

Lots of people thought this about lots of things, and we’re eventually proven wrong. Climate change is a pseudo religious cult.

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