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“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

                 John Adams

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.

         Daniel P. Moynihan, four term US Senator

I couldn’t decide between the two above wise quotes so I put them both in.  I thought it was appropriate because facts seem to be in short supply on the AGW, climate change side.

Wildfires, or forest fires in the older parlance, are widely touted as dramatically increasing as a result of climate change.  Of course, the bad ones are extensively covered by the news media and it’s easy for people to conclude that they are happening with increasing frequency and magnitude.

In Canada where this idea is widely touted the facts show otherwise.  According to the Canadian National Fire Database “The data shows a decline in the number of fires and the size of the areas destroyed”.  They further say, “Changing temperature and precipitation extremes can be expected to lead to a change in the likelihood of events such as wildfires, droughts and floods.”  In other words…….the weather! Last summer was hot and dry and we had a bunch of wildfires.  More were predicted for this summer but Ma Nature decided to move the jet stream around a touch and we’ve had a wet summer so far.

I wrote a blog post a couple of years ago about the “expert” who predicted we’d have another drought year after the previous dry summer.  He warned we’d need to start conserving water immediately.  He made a full front page in the Vancouver newspaper.  Wrong.  We had a very wet summer and no shortage of water.  The newspaper was uninterested in my letter reminding them of the erroneous and frightening prediction.

So too, are the breathless reports on annual heat waves.  The US Environmental Protection Agency report on heat waves in the US going back to 1895 shows no trend during that period.  A big spike happened in the 1920s and especially 1930s (think Dust Bowl) but reverted to the trend line thereafter.  Meanwhile, the global CO2 level rose steeply since the 1950s.

Back a few years ago it was widely reported that climate change caused a rapid rise in the number of hurricane landfalls, tornados and wildfires.  University of Colorado scientist, Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. decided to go back the record books and check the facts. He published a paper and then a book (Climate Fix) reporting that there was no increase in hurricane landfalls, tornados or wild fires in the US over the historical average.

For this heresy he was excommunicated from the polite climate fraternity of scientists, widely vilified and threatened. Confronted with the facts evoked anger. Fortunately for him, burning at the stake is no longer legal.

Facts don’t seem to trouble anyone and the screams about the end on Earth as we know it is imminent unless we change our way of life.  In Canada the politicians all are signed up to the idea that we need to eliminate all CO2 by 2050.  In the US it’s even more ambitious.  AOC and the Democrats are spouting the idea of getting rid of all CO2 by 2030.  None of these folks has spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how much alternative sources of energy we would need for this wonderful all electric society.

Vancouver energy consultant, Aldyen Donnelly, has given it a shot.  To replace all the fossil fuel with no carbon energy would require building 2.5 hydro power dams the size of the $13 billion Site C dam in BC every year for the foreseeable future!  Using solar and wind is equally daunting.  It takes one million solar panels to produce one gigawatt of electricity.

    To achieve the global goal by 2050 could be done by nuclear.  Sure.  You would only need to build one 1.5 gigawatt nuclear plant every day for the next 30 years.  Achieving this goal by any method borders on insanity.

    First coal was the enemy, at least in North America.  Of course, China and India blew off that idea with a wave.  As a substitute coal fired power plants were converted to natural gas and we have plenty of that.  But, pipelines are also evil in the minds of the environmentalists so they obstruct a method of getting the gas from the wells to the power plants.  In the recent heat wave in New York City this lack of pipeline capacity resulted in power outages as cityfolk cranked up the A/C.

This shortage of pipeline capacity will only get worse as more and more we convert to electricity with insufficient ways to make the stuff.  The radicals can’t have it both ways.

    There is no correlation between the increase in atmospheric CO2 and warming, or anything else really. So does it really make sense to destroy our economy and way of life to get rid of the stuff?  Somebody needs to get the facts to the voters and especially the politicians.

  Note:  A lot of the info for this article comes from “Green World War III” by Terrance Corcoran in the Financial Post on June 21, 2019.  Also and article by Ross McKitrick on the same page.

    At his college graduation party Ben Braddock, Dustin Hoffman’s character in “The Graduate”, was uncertain about what to do with his life.  One of the party-goers offered some advice.  He said, “One word: plastics,” which was probably good advice in 1967 when the movie was made.  We use the damn stuff in everything and it has become a serious problem.

    If you are a regular reader of this blog you already know I am not a big believer in global warming, to say the least.  I subscribe to the Bjorn Lomborg school of thinking.  In other words, while it may be getting slightly warmer, it is not such a massive problem that we need to destroy our economy in what is likely a futile attempt to prevent it.  Also, there is a lot of junk science and outright misrepresentation of the facts oft repeated by politicians and the hard left to get people riled up.  The schools are especially bad at brain washing the children.

    If you want an environmental issue to worry about that is a real and more immediate threat than climate change, consider the five massive patches of plastics floating around in the oceans.  The largest is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between Hawaii and California.  This is also called the Pacific Trash Vortex, caused by the interaction of several ocean currents.  This floating mass of plastic is about twice the size of Texas and is larger than four other ocean garbage patches in the oceans of the world.  These massive accumulations of floating garbage are formed by “gyres” or large systems of ocean currents that act like slow moving whirlpools.

    Besides the GPGP (aka the South Pacific Gyre) the other major garbage patches are the North Pacific Gyre, the North and South Atlantic Gyres and the Indian Ocean Gyre.  Garbage from coastal countries floats or is dumped into the ocean and the currents accumulate the stuff into these islands of mostly plastics.  Of course, there are also fishing nets torn loose and lost that entangle turtles, fish and sea birds.  Larger fish and mammals ingest some of the larger items that accumulate in their digestive systems and eventually kill them.

    The bigger problem is the longevity of these plastics that take decades or hundreds of years to degrade.  Wind, sun and wave action break them down to smaller and smaller fragments called micro plastics and eventually they enter the food chain through absorption by plankton and then to fish and finally to us.  Reportedly 93% of Americans tested positive for BPA, another plastic used in bottles and other common products.  No one knows the long-term effects of ingesting this stuff and the science on it is in its infancy.

    A couple of years ago two grammar school kids became famous for starting a movement to ban plastic straws.  Seattle quickly banned the things followed by California*.  Of course, straws are the least of the plastic crap dumped into the garbage that makes its way into our oceans.  35 billion water bottles enter each year, joining some 500 billion already there.  These suckers take hundreds of years to deteriorate into what?  Particles so small they cannot be seen or removed!  China and Indonesia account for 20 of the plastics dumped each year; the US ranks a very distant 13th on the list of top polluters.  Only 9.5% of plastic bottles are recycled.

    The US has spent $350 billion so far combating global warming (climate change) and will spend $35 billion per year for the next decade.  Much of that is pissed away. (Think Solindra and the others where Obama wasted $780 million).

    Damage to marine ecosystems is estimated to cost $13 B per year, no doubt less that it would cost to make a massive effort to round up the floating garbage patches and haul them to recycling or incineration.  They estimate that it would cost $122M to $460M to hire the boats per year to send them to scoop up the GPGP, a mere fraction of the annual expenditures on climate change**.

There can be arguments made that climate change is natural and not man caused but there can be no argument that the floating ocean garbage patches are the responsibility of humans.

Let’s clean up our own mess.

*Seattle’s plastic straw ban was later overturned to accommodate people with disabilities. Plastic straws must now be provided on request.

**Editor’s note: it was my idea that a floating incinerator be sent out to the garbage patch and use the energy from the burned waste to power the boat. Of course, filters would have to be put on the smokestacks to avoid creating air pollution while cleaning up the water.

A new speech affectation has replaced the “Valley Girl Lift”; raising the voice inflection, usually at the end of sentences. This also added the annoyance of making every sentence sound like a question.

The new one is called “vocal fry”, a creaky voice guttural vibration. Science magazine calls it “glottalization” and others call it “laryngealization”. I think I’ll stick with vocal fry. Until I discovered the official name for this affectation I called it “the strangled voice”.  Apparently, this manner of talking is accomplished by constricting the vocal cords to such a degree that the sound comes out at the bottom end of the vocal register.

So why do so many young women affect this maddening manner of speech? Lots of theories, but who the hell knows? Why do styles and fads come and just as quickly burn out? Some theorize it’s a kind of tribalism thing between women. Others believe that making the voice deeper creates the impression of authority and competence.

One study estimates that fully two-thirds of US women are now using this method of talking and Bob Garfield believes it is particularly annoying to older white men. Being an older, white male I can attest to that belief. It drives me crazy.

Olga Kazen in an article in Atlantic magazine reports that studies at Duke University conclude that this manner of speech may actually hurt job prospects for young women. That’s not good, but certainly better than earlier reports that vocal fry would do permanent damage to vocal cords. Subsequent research has shown that to be untrue.

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Kneeling Update

Some NFL players continue to kneel during the National Anthem despite the ongoing deterioration of attendance at games and viewers on TV. LA Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch doubled the disrespect at a game played in Mexico. He knelt for the US anthem and then stood for the Mexican anthem. Having observed this asshole in Seattle for number of years, I was not surprised. Now the rest of the country knows what a jerk he is.

The owners of these teams are understandably concerned about empty seats, reduced revenue from sales of team gear, and diminishing TV viewership. They are considering keeping the players in the locker room until the anthem is over. I seriously doubt that’s going to fool anyone. The TV networks have found a way not to show the protests and the fans in the stands booing the kneeling players: they all have decided not to broadcast the singing of the national anthem. I guess they figure if viewers don’t see it, then they will forget about it. Maybe that will work. I think the viewers will see through that ploy. Viewer-ship has continued to decline.

Frankly, I think the owners could have nipped this problem in the bud by simply telling the players who got this kneeling thing going, “Look, you are pissing people off. If you do it again you will be sent to the locker room and you will not get paid for that game.” Of course, if enough players did it the team would probably lose the game and piss off the fans. These guys are paid a lot per game. Missing a check would hurt.

In midst of this bungled customer relations nightmare comes the debate over Roger Goodell’s contract. Roger the Dodger is, as all football fans know, the Commissioner of the NFL. He’s got a good gig going already. He made $31.7 million in 2015 and now he wants a new contract for $49.5 million/year, lifetime use of a private jet and lifetime health insurance for his family. True, under his tenure the NFL grew dramatically and the value of those franchises increased handsomely. Now with attendance and viewership declining alarmingly, ardor over Goodell might be cooling. Roger’s handling of the many domestic abuse issues with players, and his fumbling of the ball on this protest stuff may suggest some new blood might be in order. Someone with balls. How about Condoleezza Rice? She always wanted the job.

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Taxes

Much to my surprise the Republicans managed to get together and pass a tax cut plan. The Democrats, completely committed to their “resist” strategy, began to howl like scalded cats. Pelosi, as usual, was way over the top calling the plan “Armageddon”. Really? Cutting taxes is going to end the world as we know it?

The Democrats rely heavily on the ignorance of the American voter. Schools don’t teach history or even basic economics anymore so the Dems confidently spew their misinformation in the hopes that the ignorant and the hyper-partisans will buy their bullshit. They blissfully pretend they don’t know what happened under the Reagan and GW Bush tax cuts. Jack Kemp (the Congressman from our home district outside of Buffalo) was the godfather of the Reagan tax strategy that brought about the great economic expansion of the 80s. But, say the liberals, “The tax cuts increased the deficit!” No, actually. As Thomas Sowell, the famous Stanford economist explains in his book, “The Vision of the Anointed,” the tax cuts greatly increased government revenues, but the Democrat controlled congress at that time, and they spent all that increase plus a lot more. I think the Trump White House (if they can maintain control of congress) plans to control spending and use the increased revenues for infrastructure, to rebuild the military and to reduce the deficit.

The Democrats standard howls of tax cuts for the rich and nothing for the middle class were momentarily muted when AT&T and Comcast immediately announced they would give every employee a $1,000 bonus. Together just those two companies employ 350,000 workers.  I suspect those folks will be very happy with an extra thousand bucks at Christmas time. A number of other companies also announced plans to expand, build new factories or otherwise improve things for workers. These announcements refuted the Dems claims even as they left their mouths.

The Democrats are betting the farm, their house and their first-born child on retaking control of congress on the November 2018. Their pipe dream of undoing the last election by drumming Trump from office via the Mueller investigation seems to be evaporating. First it was “collusion” with the Russians to steal the election. Then it became “obstruction of justice” until even Rachel Maddow couldn’t figure out a way to hang that one on Trump. Now, it has shifted to “sexual harassment” which has been weaponized to include everything from boorish behavior to rape and to attack opponents. Not that there have not been many men who crossed the line and taken advantage of their employees or junior associates. In Trump’s case the assertions are purely politically motivated and I doubt they are going anywhere.

In the deeply divided country, turn-out is everything and the Democrats are really motivated. There is nothing more dangerous than a cornered wild animal and if the Republicans do not do a better job of selling their accomplishments they could well get their asses handed to them next November.