Interesting: Mexican President Erects Barrier Around Presidential Palace

By William Teach March 7, 2021 – 7:57 am

See, walls are fine for protecting political elites, just like we’ve seen in Washington, D.C., but, not good for protecting the border from unauthorized people attempting to cross illegally and sneak into the U.S. The Mexican president said he has “no opinion” of the wall, but, hailed China Joe’s halt of border wall construction

Mexican president defends 10-foot barriers to wall off women protesters

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Saturday said a metallic barrier to wall off the presidential palace ahead of a planned women’s march on International Women’s Day was to avoid provocation and protect historic buildings from vandalism.

In a country where femicides rose nearly 130% between 2015 and 2020, critics said the decision to erect the 10-foot-high (3-meter) barriers was symptomatic of Lopez Obrador’s apathy toward the crisis of violence afflicting women.

Ahead of International Women’s Day on Monday, barriers were also installed around other emblematic buildings and monuments in downtown Mexico City where a year ago tens of thousands of people protested rampant violence against women and impunity.

“We have to avoid provocation of people who only want to cause damage,” Lopez Obrador said at an event in Yucatan. “Imagine, if we don’t take care of the national palace and they vandalize it. What image will this send to the world?”

Hmm, we have to avoid provocation of people who only want to sneak into the U.S. and take jobs from citizens, drive down wages, drive drunk, assault citizens, steal people’s identity, commit arson and rape and child sexual assault and murder.” Well, hey, it’s always some excuse to protect the elites, be it walls, excuse me, fencing, fossil fueled limos and private jets, you name it.

Lopez Obrador reiterated that women had the right to protest and cited his own movement in 2006 as an appropriate form of peaceful protest.

“The presidency was stolen from us … and we protested but never broke glass. … I walked two, three times all the way from Tabasco to Mexico City,” he said. Lopez Obrador has repeatedly accused opponents of electoral fraud over the years.

Interesting. The article doesn’t complain about Lopez Abrador saying an election was stolen from him.

Interior Minister Olga Sanchez Cordero said on Twitter that the barriers were “for the protection of the women.”

Oh, right, right. Sure thing, Sparky.

Read: Interesting: Mexican President Erects Barrier Around Presidential Palace »

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Closing Offshore Wealth Loophole Could Help Solve ‘Climate Change’ Or Something

By William Teach March 6, 2021 – 3:00 pm

Just so you know, we aren’t even going to get to the central point of the headline before seeing some very, very interesting information in this article by Vox

One weird trick to fix climate change: Close the offshore wealth loophole
How closing tax havens can fund climate policy.

Governments have long tried pricing carbon to induce companies to make the kind of serious emissions reductions actually needed to address the climate emergency.

They’ve done this by imposing a carbon tax, an additional fee for each ton of carbon dioxide emitted, or through “cap and trade” schemes, which give companies limited allowances for how much CO2 they can emit and then allow them to buy and sell those allowances to offer more flexibility. (3 more paragraphs on this, including how carbon taxes have failed. You know how Vox writers like to run on and on)

Jessica F. Green, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto whose work focuses on global environmental politics, argues that’s partly because focusing on the technicalities of carbon pricing is a good way to avoid addressing the harder problem of actually ending fossil fuel use.

“We’ve been working on how to measure carbon for 30 years and we’re still debating about or refining what it is because it’s easier to do that than it is to actually decarbonize,” Green told me.

Green argues in a new paper that climate change is not a “market failure” to be fixed through mechanisms like carbon pricing. Rather, she says, it’s “a problem of societal transformation” that requires “strong state intervention to reorganize the economy.”

Surprise? I wonder what she wants to transform society to and what type of economy. Why is it that this supposed science problem always requires Government tyranny?

Green says countries should aggressively pursue taxation (one of the basic functions of the state), but of the rich — and use the money generated to fund climate policy.

And tax the rich. Do you get a paycheck? Then you’ll be considered rich. People said I was nuts back in the early part of this Century when I said the global warming/climate change issue had almost nothing to do with science and was mostly about empowering government, about taxing the masses out the ying yang, taking away freedom, liberty, and choice, and creating an authoritarian government.

Eventually Green gets into the offshore wealth loopholes. The beginning of the article tells you all you need to know.

Read: Closing Offshore Wealth Loophole Could Help Solve ‘Climate Change’ Or Something »

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If All You See…

By William Teach March 6, 2021 – 1:00 pm

…is a hazy day from too much carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is 90Ninety Miles From Tyranny, with a post on migrants gang raping a woman after she “stopped to talk to them about their situation”.

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Bummer: China’s 5 Year Climate (scam) Plan Won’t Get Them To Carbon Neutral By 2050

By William Teach March 6, 2021 – 10:30 am

Other than climaidiots, is there anyone who truly believes that China has any intention of keeping their pledges for being net zero/carbon neutral? Seriously, you can’t believe China is doing anything more than paying lip service to sucker the weak cult minds, right?

China aims to be carbon neutral by 2060. Its new 5-year plan won’t cut it.

0n Friday, China released a draft summary of its 14th Five-Year Plan, the all-important document that not only guides the country’s economic development but also has huge consequences for global carbon dioxide emissions and climate change.

The new plan’s 2025 emissions goals reflect an ongoing contradiction between China’s short-term and long-term climate goals.

In the long run, China has expressed a strong commitment to climate action. President Xi Jinping surprised the world last September when he announced that China would aim to reach carbon neutrality by 2060. Climate scientists have called for countries to hit that goal by 2050, but it was still a significant step forward for China — the first time the country made any formal commitment to zeroing out its emissions.

And yet, even as Xi made that announcement, CO2 emissions in China were soaring. Like the rest of the world, the pandemic had initially caused economic activity to plummet in China in early 2020. But after swiftly bringing the pandemic under control within its borders, the Chinese government funneled stimulus dollars into the heavily polluting construction and manufacturing sectors, stoking steel and cement production. As a result, China’s emissions rose an estimated 1.5 percent in 2020, even accounting for the initial drop.

“China’s economic recovery from the pandemic so far has been anything but green,” Li Shuo, a senior global policy adviser for Greenpeace East Asia, said during a press conference on Monday.

Vox’s climahysteric Lili Pike seems rather surprised by this. She’s going to continue being surprised all the way up to 2050 when China still has a big “carbon footprint”, unless there is some big breakthrough in power production. China is happy to sell substandard wind turbines and solar panels, created by mining and lots of fossil fuels, to climate cultists.

The biggest question remains whether China will reverse its coal consumption, which increased slightly last year even during the pandemic. Environmentalists grew increasingly concerned as China built 38.4 gigawatts of new coal-fired power plant capacity in 2020 alone — three-quarters of new coal construction globally.

They’ll pledge to do so and then won’t

What happens internationally may also play a role in shaping China’s emissions. The Biden administration has pledged to reassert US global leadership on climate change and is planning to host a global climate summit on Earth Day in April. In the lead-up, the administration has said it will release a new, more ambitious 2030 target for the US.

That could potentially free up China to also increase its 2030 goals. In December, President Xi announced new targets, which experts said were not strong enough. However, they have not been formalized under the Paris agreement yet, so there is still room for China to make its targets more aggressive by the deadline: the next big round of UN climate negotiations to be held in November in Glasgow, Scotland.

Pledges are nice. And, just like most New Year’s pledges they are roundly ignored. China has no intention of actually following through on them, but, they’ll be happy to help other nations do so, selling them products, seeing other countries harm their economies for this scam while China never does so.

Read: Bummer: China’s 5 Year Climate (scam) Plan Won’t Get Them To Carbon Neutral By 2050 »

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Surprise: Michael “Robust Debate” Mann Claims Hurricane Activity Is Your Fault

By William Teach March 6, 2021 – 7:16 am

His big tree ring study leading to the “hockey stick” was a bunch of mule fritters, so, sure, let’s listen to him again as he fear mongers

Humans, not nature, are the cause of changes in Atlantic hurricane cycles, new study finds

It’s well known in science that for more than a century hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean has oscillated between active and inactive periods, each lasting a few decades. For the past couple of decades, meteorologists and climate scientists have believed that this ebb and flow was due to a natural warming and cooling cycle built into the climate system called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO.

The term was coined in the year 2000 by world-renowned climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University and author of the new book “The New Climate War.” The concept of the AMO has become ubiquitous in explanations and forecasts of active or inactive hurricane seasons.

The image below, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), shows how hurricane activity seems to flow in roughly 60-year waves — active for around 30 years when the Atlantic in its warm phase and inactive for around 30 years when in the cool phase.

But today, in a newly released paper in the journal Science, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation may have been dealt a deadly blow — by the very man who named it. Mann now concludes the AMO is very likely an artifact of climate change, driven by “human forcing” from rising carbon emissions in the modern era and “natural forcing” due to massive volcanic eruptions in pre-industrial times.

Sherman Potter Bull Cookies

It’s just very convenient that Mann, along with the rest of the Cult of Climastrology, can say “see, back then it was all nature but now it’s Your Fault,” eh?

The finding — which is bound to generate significant controversy and pushback from the weather and climate communities due to how broadly accepted the concept of the AMO has become — may very well shake the foundations of understanding of what has been driving historical hurricane cycles.

Simply put, if true, this discovery means that during the 20th century and beyond, humans — not natural variability — have been the main driving force in the up-and-down cycles of hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean.

I wonder how many faulty premises and data points will be in this study? Meh, it matters little to the Cult, because this now gives them an excuse to call for more taxes and government Authority.

 

Read: Surprise: Michael “Robust Debate” Mann Claims Hurricane Activity Is Your Fault »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 62 Comments | Trackback URL

Democrats Join Republicans In Scuttling $15 Minimum Wage From Senate COVID Bill

By William Teach March 6, 2021 – 6:57 am

Donald Trump was 100% correct that this is something that states/cities should enact, not the federal government

Group of Senate Democrats and Republicans vote to keep $15 minimum wage out of Biden’s COVID stimulus bill

A group of Democratic senators joined all Senate Republicans in voting against Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposal to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour on Friday.

The Vermont independent tried to add the provision to President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 stimulus bill as the Senate considered the $1.9 trillion measure. But the effort failed in a 58-42 vote with eight members of the Senate Democratic caucus voting against it.

The vote started at 11:03 a.m. EST Friday and didn’t officially end for nearly 12 hours as Democrats and Republicans negotiated changes to an extension of unemployment benefits.

The outcome of the vote could spell trouble for future Democratic attempts to raise the minimum wage, something Biden included in his initial stimulus proposal that passed the House last week.

It may or may not cause trouble in the future if they bring up a clean bill that is simply about raising the minimum wage, rather than including it in a completely unrelated bill, and, by unrelated, the minimum wage has nothing to do with COVID relief (and most of the bill is unrelated to COVID relief). It would have been against the ruled to include a minimum wage increase in the bill that they know they will have to reconcile (which also shows that it is highly partisan if they have to go that route.)

Republicans have been united against the $15 proposal, citing opposition by some small businesses and an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office which estimates it would result in the loss of as many as 1.4 million jobs. The same analysis said it would boost the pay for as many as 27 million Americans and would lift nearly 1 million out of poverty.

Higher wages increase the cost to employers of producing goods and services, and those costs are generally passed on to consumers who usually react by purchasing fewer goods and services, according to the CBO. As a consequence, employers faced with having to scale back their output usually cut back their workforce.

I’m rather shocked that the USA Today allowed that 2nd paragraph, despite being the truth as to how the economy and consumers react. The question now is not about how many times Comrade Bernie will attempt to add the $15 MW to unrelated bills, but, 1. whether the GOP can kill off lots of the unrelated garbage and unnecessary spending

and 2. what happens when the reconciled bill is reconciled with the House version, which does contain the $15 MW increase. Will the House drop it, or try to force it back in even with the knowledge that it won’t pass the Senate? And another question, why hasn’t the GOP simply submitted legislation that provides for the $1,400 checks, unemployment relief, vaccinations, and other COVID specific measures? Heck, introduce one for the checks as a stand alone, force Dems to vote on it.

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Your Fault: Climate Apocalypse Is Killing Butterflies

By William Teach March 5, 2021 – 3:00 pm

All because you refuse to ride a bicycle and give up your delicious burger fixation

Climate Change Is Killing Butterflies in the American West

Butterflies play essential role in pollinating wild plants and crops. Which makes a new study published in Science on Thursday such bad news. It shows the climate crisis is posing an existential threat to their survival, particularly in the American West.

The researchers—who hail from Tennessee, Arizona, California, and Texas—combined three datasets on butterfly observations. The first, from a University of California professor, included 45 years of data from California. The second, from the North American Butterfly Association, contained 27 years of data compiled by experts and citizen scientists across America. And the third was from the the global iNaturalist web platform in which volunteers can log butterfly observations on an app.

The research focused on 450 species of butterfly populations from Washington down to California and stretching as far east as Montana and New Mexico. That area, the scientists write, is “particularly useful for understanding the effects of climate change on insects” because it’s been ground-zero for warming and drying trends. It also has a variety of ecosystems and elevations, and includes all kinds of land uses from cities to protected parks to farms.

Across that region, the team observed a precipitous decline of 1.6% in the number of butterflies every year over the past four decades. Previous research has documented the decline of butterfly populations as well, but scientists have had difficulty determining how great a factor the changing climate has been. It’s been hard to separate global warming’s role from that of other stressors, like deforestation as well as pollution from chemical pesticide use and extractive industry.

Who could imagine that the climate, which has always changed, could make a difference? I wonder how this compares to previous warm periods not Blamed on Mankind? And during cool periods?

Read: Your Fault: Climate Apocalypse Is Killing Butterflies »

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

If All You See…

By William Teach March 5, 2021 – 1:00 pm

…is an ocean that will soon rise up and swallow the land, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Datechguy’s Blog, with a post on the Equality Act establishing Progressivism as the national religion.

Read: If All You See… »

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Surprise: China Joe Is Finding Limitations As The “Mask Candidate”

By William Teach March 5, 2021 – 10:30 am

Heck, even Joe said he had limitations, but, the Credentialed Media was super excited about Joe implementing top down government control

Joe Biden campaigned as the mask candidate. Now he’s facing the limits of the bully pulpit

Joe Biden ran for the White House as the mask candidate, criticizing then-President Donald Trump’s dismissal of masks, promising to get tough on mask wearing and modeling good behavior by wearing at least one – and sometimes two –masks himself.

“The one thing we do know — these masks make a gigantic difference,” Biden said last June. “I would insist that everybody out in public be wearing that mask.”

They do? That’s interesting, since cases and deaths spiked despite wearing masks and has continued like that for many, many months

As president, however, Biden is running up against the limits of the bully pulpit as mask-wearing remains politically polarized.

Plus, people have gotten tired of pandemic restrictions and see less need for precautions as COVID-19 vaccinations increase, even though health officials are urgently warning that now is not the time to ease up.

After the governors of Texas and Mississippi moved to lift mask mandates on Tuesday, an exasperated and frustrated Biden said Wednesday that such decisions come from “Neanderthal thinking.”

So, he’s not a dictator? States and people actually have Rights? Huh.

Biden is also being pressed on what he’s doing to try to either convince states to stick with pandemic restrictions or to work around governors.

As a candidate, Biden promised that if the governors wouldn’t listen to him, then: “I go to every mayor, I go to every councilman, I go to every local official, say, mandate the mask, man – say, this is what you have to do when you’re out. Make sure you encourage it being done.”

The White House insists Biden has been doing that, through the administration’s regular calls with governors, frequent public comments and other actions that have included a public service announcement at the start of the Super Bowl. (First lady Jill Biden did a separate PSA on mask wearing with White House dogs, Major and Champ, for the Puppy Bowl.)

“Go” is not phone calls. Dude barely leaves his basement, and his few actual appearances require his wife next to him to keep him from showing his dementia.

“We are going to continue to use every method of the bully pulpit at our disposal to convey directly to people … that mask wearing, social distancing, getting access to the vaccine is the path to go back to normal,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday.

She said this while not wearing a mask. The above screenshot comes from the video at the USA Today article. Why should we believe in masks when she never wears one while inside with lots of people, as the rules for D.C., which do not necessarily apply to the White House, and the rules put forth by Joe, which 100% do? How many times has China Joe been caught without a mask?

Read: Surprise: China Joe Is Finding Limitations As The “Mask Candidate” »

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How Farmers Can (Be Forced By Government) To Fight Climate Apocalypse Or Something

By William Teach March 5, 2021 – 7:17 am

It’s always great when people who aren’t anywhere close to being experts, or even amateurs, in a field like to tell the experts how to do their jobs

How farmers could fight climate change (and make a profit)

Agriculture has never been a principal focus of efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. But farm emissions — which make up about 10% of the U.S. total — are coming under increasing scrutiny as Democrats take the reins of agricultural policy and farmers themselves awaken to the threats of climate change. One strategy in particular is getting attention this year: encouraging farmers to view emissions reduction and carbon sequestration as potential sources of income.

The idea is fairly straightforward. Farmers would take steps to reduce their carbon output, such as reducing tillage to avoid releasing soil carbon, planting cover crops to hold carbon in the soil, applying manure treatments and “digesters” to limit emissions of methane, and using nitrogen fertilizer more precisely to lower nitrous-oxide emissions. In return, they could sell credits to companies looking to reduce their own climate footprint. Private markets for such credits are already springing up, and Congress took measures to encourage similar exchanges in the 2008 Farm Bill.

So, Democrats are going to use government force to “encourage” farmers to not use their fields to grow food, and to use older, less safe processes like spraying shit instead of modern treatments on the growing food. And the farmers will somehow make money by selling credits on these mythical private markets for credits, which are really backed by and mandated by Government.

But much about this concept has yet to be worked out, notably the basic question of how to measure the climate value of various farming practices. Here the U.S. Department of Agriculture could help. A Senate bill introduced last year would direct the USDA to create standards for measuring the effectiveness of climate-protection measures on farms, certify people to help farmers take such measurements and verify their value, and work with the Environmental Protection Agency to monitor private carbon-credit markets.

More government interference and control of the agriculture sector. Which means cost increases for food. All for a mythical problem.

Such exchanges could go a long way toward encouraging farmers to reduce emissions and sequester carbon. But they won’t work unless regulators can ensure that they’ll actually bring substantial climate benefits. The danger is that a carbon-credit system might instead mainly enable airlines, investment funds, energy firms, agribusinesses and other companies to excuse their own greenhouse-gas emissions by purchasing inexpensive and largely meaningless offsets.

It won’t make a difference in the climate at all. It will make farmers, who are independent spirits, resist like heck.

By setting standards for measurement and verification, and monitoring the private markets, the USDA can maximize the potential of “carbon farming.” It can also extend the benefits beyond the big operations, which can most easily demonstrate emissions reductions, to smaller farms — by helping them participate in collective efforts. If such measurements proved reliable, the Biden administration’s proposal to create a government “carbon bank” — which would buy credits from farmers for a guaranteed price per ton — might act as a powerful incentive for farmers big and small.

Sure sounds less like a private market and more like government dominance, eh?

That said, carbon trading does hold significant promise for limiting emissions on the farm — so long as it’s based on verifiable practices that will allow markets to accurately value the credits. The first step is to get the right data.

I suggest that would start implementing these types of carbon trading schemes on credentialed news outlets, print, TV, and even Internet, let’s see if they’re good with trading schemes when they apply to their own industry. No? They’d be mad? Huh.

Read: How Farmers Can (Be Forced By Government) To Fight Climate Apocalypse Or Something »

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