“Experts” Upset Biden Is Being Super Cautious Over Ukraine

By William Teach March 24, 2022 – 6:45 am

If Joe had been strong prior to Russia invading Ukraine, if he hadn’t emboldened Russia, if he had not FUBAR’d the Afghanistan withdrawl, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Regardless, it’s where we are, and, Ukraine is not worth WWIII. Too many on both the right and left seem to want to push us into war. The warmongers won’t give up

Biden’s risk-averse approach to Russia could create greater threat, experts say

unintended consequencesPresident Joe Biden’s high-stakes summit with other NATO leaders on Thursday will be one of the most scrutinized meetings on the world stage in decades, and could have enormous implications for both the war in Ukraine and the global balance of power.

Despite calls from Ukraine to do more to help stave off Russia’s ruthless invasion, Biden has taken a cautious approach — wary of escalating the conflict by drawing in U.S. forces as part of a more direct NATO response. But after nearly a month of fighting, some foreign policy and national security experts ABC News spoke to say it may be time for the alliance to take on a more direct role.

Since before the fighting broke out, Biden has insisted that American troops would not fight Russian forces inside Ukraine, warning that going head-to-head would lead to “a third world war.”

But Barry Pavel, a former National Security Council senior official during the Bush and Obama administration and the senior vice president and director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council, says that’s far from inevitable.

“There have been other cases where U.S. and Russian forces have unfortunately come into friction and World War III didn’t start,” Pavel said, characterizing the strategy as simplistic. “There are hundreds of options that could be done between what NATO is doing now and risking World War III.”

Hundreds? None are named.

The greater threat, warns Pavel, might be in leaving Putin unchecked.

“If he is emboldened by success in Ukraine, then he will be more aggressive in his efforts to nibble and to move into areas of perceived weakness in NATO members,” he said. “If he achieves his goal, you’ll have Russian forces on the borders of seven NATO members, including nuclear forces in Belarus, and so he’ll use that new posture to really heighten European insecurity to a great degree.”

So, send troops in? Create a no fly zone? Why are some people so invested in pushing towards war?

Thomas Graham, a former NSC senior director for Russia and a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says that beyond discussing support for Ukraine, NATO leaders should use the upcoming summit to make sharpen their signaling to the Kremlin.

“NATO leaders want to make sure that they’ve done everything that they can in order to deter the Russians,” he said. “Have we augmented the forces in Eastern Europe to the appropriate levels? And have we convinced the Russians that in fact we are determined to honor the Article Five guarantee and protect every inch of NATO territory?”

This kind of stuff keeps going and going, and, personally, I’d rather Biden not get aggressive. Especially since his people are incompetent.

Read: “Experts” Upset Biden Is Being Super Cautious Over Ukraine »

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Like To Work Out? Stay In Shape? You’re A Far Right Racist Fascist Nazi, You Know

By William Teach March 23, 2022 – 3:04 pm

Nope, it doesn’t matter if you’re black, Latino, Asian, Democrat, Progressive, Socialist, etc. MSNBC has Spoken

Well, that sucks. From the screed

It appears the far right has taken advantage of pandemic at-home fitness trends to expand its decade-plus radicalization of physical mixed martial arts (MMA) and combat sports spaces.

Earlier this month, researchers reported that a network of online “fascist fitness” chat groups on the encrypted platform Telegram are recruiting and radicalizing young men with neo-Nazi and white supremacist extremist ideologies. Initially lured with health tips and strategies for positive physical changes, new recruits are later invited to closed chat groups where far-right content is shared.

Physical fitness has always been central to the far right. In “Mein Kampf,” Hitler fixated on boxing and jujitsu, believing they could help him create an army of millions whose aggressive spirit and impeccably trained bodies, combined with “fanatical love of the fatherland,” would do more for the German nation than any “mediocre” tactical weapons training.

These people are just stuck on Nazis.

The intersection of extremism and fitness leans into a shared obsession with the male body, training, masculinity, testosterone, strength and competition. Physical fitness training, especially in combat sports, appeals to the far right for many reasons: fighters are trained to accept significant physical pain, to be “warriors,” and to embrace messaging around solidarity, heroism, and brotherhood. It’s championed as a tool to help fight the “coming race war” and the street battles that will precede it. Recruits are encouraged to link individual moral virtues such as willpower, decisiveness and courage, with desired collective traits such as virility and manliness. This also works in reverse, with white supremacists encouraging potential recruits or activists to stay in good physical shape as a way of managing self-presentation to the public. The neo-Nazi blogger Andrew Anglin advised his followers that “fat people” should be required to commit to losing weight if they are to stay involved with groups or in-person gatherings, noting that “continued obesity should not be tolerated.”

The gym I go to usually has about 30% black in attendance. Does that make them extremists? Liberals always have to turn the volume to 11.

Read: Like To Work Out? Stay In Shape? You’re A Far Right Racist Fascist Nazi, You Know »

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If All You See…

By William Teach March 23, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible pool made with horrible carbon pollution spewing concrete, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Blazing Cat Fur, with a post on Twitter experts being upset over the end of mask mandates.

Read: If All You See… »

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SEC’s Climate Scam Rule Could Force Companies To Account For “Pollution” They Didn’t Create

By William Teach March 23, 2022 – 10:30 am

Carbon dioxide is not pollution, and the SEC is creating all sorts of problems for businesses over a scam

SEC’s landmark climate-change ruling could demand companies account for pollution they don’t directly create

Should Amazon.com and Walmart be forced to tell investors how much pollution all their suppliers send into the atmosphere? Should ExxonMobil be responsible in accounting for the emissions that auto drivers rack up?

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday gave the nod, by a 3-1 vote, to preliminary approval of long-anticipated regulation on climate-change disclosure for publicly-traded companies, including what stock and bond-issuing companies do to prevent pollution and how they prepare for rising oceans, severe storms and more.

All eyes have been on whether the agency could force companies to regularly report the more complicated Scope 3 emissions that are out of their direct control.

The proposal around Scope 3 announced Monday calls for a phase-in for companies, a safe harbor for liability around the reporting, which could buttress banks in particular, and an exemption from such emissions disclosures for smaller companies. After collecting comments, the SEC’s proposal has included some of the compromise language urged by the business community and mostly Republican lawmakers.

Scope 3 inclusion was a stipulation embraced by environmental groups, some Democratic lawmakers and investing advisers who believe only the most stringent rulemaking will curb climate change in time, and to satisfy growing interest in environmental sensitivity among investors.

Why, exactly, is the SEC even getting involved and creating these rules? It seems a pretty big expansion of their power

(Investopedia) The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (SEA) was created to govern securities transactions on the secondary market, after issue, ensuring greater financial transparency and accuracy and less fraud or manipulation.

All companies listed on stock exchanges must follow the requirements outlined in the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Primary requirements include registration of any securities listed on stock exchanges, disclosure, proxy solicitations, and margin and audit requirements. The purpose of these requirements is to ensure an environment of fairness and investor confidence.

And now they’ll have to spend lots of time and money on something very silly

Opponents, meanwhile, have said the costly reporting demands of Scope 3 are untenable and likely set up a court challenge to the SEC.

Still, big moves in climate-change regulation have increasingly gained value as a centerpiece of the Biden administration’s efforts to slow the planet’s rising temperature, particularly as other White House clean-energy initiatives have stalled in Congress. A Gary Gensler-led SEC has made landmark climate change ruling part of its DNA, including in speeches.

There will be plenty of lawsuits, since you have 3 unelected bureaucrats determining that companies must comply with their cult beliefs, a serious overstretch of the SEC’s mandate. If they want to do something like that then it needs to be a vote in Congress by the duly elected Legislative Branch, rather than inventing a rule out of some obscure, unrelated language in other bills. How will this rule help at all?

For investors, most want to fairly price the stocks of companies that will be affected by climate change. Investors are trying to guess if a company’s products may be regulated in the future because of their impact on the climate, or if its supply chains may get more expensive over time. A company could be based in one part of the country, but source most of its raw materials in a region subjected to rising sea levels, for instance.

So they want to know if Government will screw with their investments with idiotic, scam related legislation? Huh.

Read: SEC’s Climate Scam Rule Could Force Companies To Account For “Pollution” They Didn’t Create »

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We’re Saved: Ann Arbor To Dim Lights To Spread Awareness Of ‘Climate Change’ Doom

By William Teach March 23, 2022 – 7:15 am

Wow, this is totally going to help. Will they be doing this every day?

Ann Arbor dimming city lights to raise awareness about climate change

 For several years, Ann Arbor has joined others around the world in switching off lights on the last Saturday in March as a symbolic gesture to raise awareness about climate change and promote energy conservation.

The city has participated in the Earth Hour movement by turning off lights at city hall and dimming streetlights downtown.

Wait, that’s it? I even used 12 Foot Ladder to remove the paywall, and that’s all there was. One would think in the era of climate doom this would involve a bit more of a story, eh? I’m sure the city thinks they are Doing Something. If this helps so much, just turn them all off, or at least dim all the city lights. But, they’re right that it is a symbolic gesture, because that’s about all Warmists engage in.

Anyhow

‘OK Doomer’ and the Climate Advocates Who Say It’s Not Too Late

st greta carAlaina Wood is well aware that, planetarily speaking, things aren’t looking so great. She’s read the dire climate reports, tracked cataclysmic weather events and gone through more than a few dark nights of the soul.

She is also part of a growing cadre of people, many of them young, who are fighting climate doomism, the notion that it’s too late to turn things around. They believe that focusing solely on terrible climate news can sow dread and paralysis, foster inaction, and become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

With the war in Ukraine prompting a push for ramped up production of fossil fuels, they say it’s ever more pressing to concentrate on all the good climate work, especially locally, that is being done. “People are almost tired of hearing how bad it is; the narrative needs to move onto solutions,” said Ms. Wood, 25, a sustainability scientist who communicates much of her climate messaging on TikTok, the most popular social media platform among young Americans. “The science says things are bad. But it’s only going to get worse the longer it takes to act.”

That seems rather doomy.

Some climate advocates refer to the stance taken by Ms. Wood and her allies as “OK Doomer,” a riff on “OK Boomer,” the Gen Z rebuttal to condescension from older folks.

How cute. Certainly, Ms. Wood and her fellow non-doomers are doing Big Things

Yet people like Ms. Wood, and her thriving community of climate communicators, believe that staying stuck in climate doom only helps preserve a status quo reliant on consumerism and fossil fuels. Via social media, she and her fellow “eco-creators” present alternative narratives that highlight positive climate news as well as ways people can fight the crisis in their everyday lives.

Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Activism, videos, “climate strikes”, but, absolutely nothing about modifying their own lives.

Read: We’re Saved: Ann Arbor To Dim Lights To Spread Awareness Of ‘Climate Change’ Doom »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

Bummer: Democrat Talking Point To Blame Fossil Fuels Companies For High Prices Not Working

By William Teach March 23, 2022 – 7:00 am

They tried blaming Russia, and people could read the charts that showed gas prices going up before Russia invaded Ukraine

Americans weren’t buying that, so, Democrats flipped to trying to blame oil/gas companies. Apparently, people understand the Biden Effect, along with how a commodities market works

Survey: Plurality Blame Joe Biden for High Gas Prices

A plurality of Americans blame the Biden administration for high gas prices, an Emerson Polling survey released this week found.

Inflation is continuing to hit Americans hard as 83 percent reveal they are experiencing some level of hardship due to increased prices of goods. Of those, 40 percent say they are experiencing “significant” hardship. Given that, it comes as no surprise that the economy is the top issue for respondents. 

According to the survey, “When asked about who they blame for an increase in gas prices” specifically, “a plurality (39%) blame the Biden Administration, 21% blame the sanctions on Russia, and 18% blame gas and oil companies.”

Biden has long refused to take responsibility for skyrocketing gas prices, blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as gas and oil companies.

“I’m sick of this stuff. … The American people think the reason for inflation is the government spending more money,” Biden raged this month. “Simply. Not. True.”

So, the Blamestorming has rather failed. You can’t really blame any politician for refusing to take any responsibility, but, you can blame them when they do everything possibly to make the situation worse, and then do the wrong things to address the problem to resolve the problem, or, at least reduce the impact.

Read: Bummer: Democrat Talking Point To Blame Fossil Fuels Companies For High Prices Not Working »

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If All You See…

By William Teach March 22, 2022 – 2:55 pm

…is a horrible stadium which uses lots of fossil fuels and invites people to come in fossil fueled vehicles, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is A View From The Beach, with a post wondering if Hunter Biden will be indicted.

Forgot to hit the button to post at 1pm. My bad.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Climate Cult Says Rich Nations Must End Fossil Fuels Use By 2034

By William Teach March 22, 2022 – 2:48 pm

Does this include all the climate cult bigwigs being disallowed from taking fossil fueled trips to big climate conferences?

Rich nations told to stamp out oil, gas by 2034 to avoid climate chaos

Wealthy countries must completely stop oil and gas production within the next 12 years if the world is to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avert the most disastrous impacts of climate change, a study published Tuesday warned.

Lead author Kevin Anderson, of Manchester University’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the 2034 threshold applied to a host of rich countries, while poorer nations would have until the middle of the century to catch up.

The 76-page analysis found that 19 of the world’s 88 oil and gas producers needed to stamp out their activities if the world was to have a 50/50 chance of capping temperatures at 1.5C of warming.

“The report makes absolutely clear that there is no capacity in the carbon budget for opening up new production facilities of any kind, whether coal mines, oil wells or gas terminals,” an overview of the study said.

Or, all the climate cultists could give up their own use of fossil fuels, and let’s see how that goes with their own lives.

Maine scientists on Everest hike shine light on climate crisis

Six researchers from the University of Maine traveled to Mount Everest and are releasing their findings from their ice research conducted there.

Near the top of the mountain in the Himalayan Mountain Range, on the border of China and Nepal, Paul Mayewski, Ph.D., lead the team nearly three years ago as part of a National Geographic expedition.

Hmm, so, they all took a long, long fossil fueled flight to Katmandu, then a fossil fueled flight to Lukla, before hiking to Everest, stopping at lots of tea houses in Nepal which often run on fossil fuels, natural gas and propane. All to whine about ‘climate change’.

Read: Climate Cult Says Rich Nations Must End Fossil Fuels Use By 2034 »

Posted in Climahypocrites, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

Pilots Sue CDC Over Federal Mask Mandate

By William Teach March 22, 2022 – 10:29 am

Of course, since most of the news media is biased for Democrats, this is less news and more hit piece

10 JetBlue, American Airlines, and Southwest pilots are suing the CDC over the federal mask mandate, saying it encourages unruly behavior but they’re citing flawed science

A small group of pilots who work for major US airlines are suing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the recently extended federal transportation mask mandate.

The 10 pilots work for commercial airlines including JetBlue, American Airlines, and Southwest Airlines, according to the lawsuit.

In the filing, the pilots alleged that the CDC acted “without providing public notice or soliciting comment.”

The federal mask mandate applies to public transportation, including commercial aircraft. On March 10 it was extended for 30 days, according to the Transportation Security Administration. The rule is set to remain in effect through at least April 18.

How many of the issues on planes revolve around masks?

The pilots say in the suit they have “serious concerns about the safety implications” of the mask mandate in relation to unruly-passenger incidents caused by mask policies.

The lawsuit says: “As pilots for major airlines, we have seen up close and personal the chaos in the sky created by the FTMM (Federal Transportation Mask Mandate), with thousands of reports to the Federal Aviation Administration of ‘unruly’ passenger behavior since the FTMM took effect Feb. 1, 2021.”

The pilots described 2021 as the “worst year on record for buffoonish behavior on planes” and blamed nearly all of the “chaos” on mask requirements.

The FAA has said 4,290 mask-related incidents were reported in 2021, accounting for more than 75% of the agency’s unruly-passenger reports. Since January of last year, the agency proposed fines of more than $682,000 against unruly passengers.

In fairness, people know the rules, and, wearing a mask for a couple hours or so is no big deal, at least in my opinion. Sure, it’s annoying, but, I’ll consider wearing one while flying simply to reduce the chance for a cold or flu. And, again, it is the rule, as stupid as it is. People knew the rule when booking the flight. Instead, some try to create problems, for whatever reason (social media fame, they want to make a point, etc), inconveniencing everyone else and getting themselves in trouble.

But the suit also claims, without good evidence, that the mask mandate “impairs pilots’ health.”

“Wearing a mask before and during flight causes us numerous medical deficiencies,” the pilots claim in their suit, saying that they’re suffering from “mask fatigue,” which is not a thing, and suggesting that “face masks are totally ineffective.” The reality is that face masks are effective at reducing COVID-19 transmission (and high-quality respirators do the job better than simple cloth coverings).

The pilots cite an article authored by Lucas Wall, a longtime opponent to the federal mask mandate, who has filed several lawsuits against the CDC and airlines. Wall, an avid world traveler and former newspaper journalist, has no scientific or public health background.

First, that’s funny because neither of the “journalists” writing this piece have a background in science or public health. The majority of climate crisis (scam) pieces in the news are written by people with no science background. Regardless, anyone who has been forced to wear a mask knows exactly what mask fatigue is. We’ve experienced it. We’ve felt it. All for masks that are, at best, 10% effective at stopping COVID19. And why do pilots, sitting in the cockpit behind closed doors, need to wear masks? They’re segregated from the “cattle” in the back.

Of course, it might be a bit late for this lawsuit, if the mask mandate does go away in April. But, since the Usual Suspects are fearmongering on a new surge from a sub-variant, they might keep it.

Read: Pilots Sue CDC Over Federal Mask Mandate »

Posted in Bat Soup Virus, Wonky Media | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

New One: Astronomy Is Bad For ‘Climate Change’

By William Teach March 22, 2022 – 8:43 am

In all my years of blogging on anthropogenic climate change, and watching it long before that, I don’t think I’ve ever run across this. It just goes to show that the Cult of Climastrology will blame/link everything to the doomy cult beliefs

Astronomy’s Environmental Toll Is Surprisingly High. But There Are Ways to Clean it Up

It’s hard not to love the Kepler Space Telescope. Launched in 2009, the venerable spacecraft discovered nearly 5,000 suspected or confirmed exoplanets—or worlds orbiting other stars—during its 11-year lifetime. Built and launched at a relative bargain price of $600 million, it generated 4,306 scientific papers written by 9,606 authors. So all good, right? Well, not entirely.

In that same 11 years, the telescope that discovered so many other worlds did no favors for our own, generating an annual total of 4,784 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, or a hefty 52,620 tons over its lifetime, mostly as a result of the electricity and supercomputing power it took to keep it operating. That also comes out to 12 tons of CO2 per paper and five tons per author.

Astronomy, in some ways, seems like the cleanest of sciences. After all, it costs nothing to look at the sky. But both ground-based and space-based observatories extract a huge environmental toll—in terms of construction, launch, energy generation and consumption, and even, at least before the pandemic, in the air miles burned as the world’s estimated 30,000 astronomers flew from conference to conference around the globe.

Science is bad for ‘climate change’.

Now, a new paper in Nature Astronomy has taken the full measure of the greenhouse gas footprint of the skygazing discipline. For the study, researchers analyzed the total CO2 output of 46 space-based missions and 39 ground observatories, dating as far back as the the 62-year old Observatoire de Haute Provence, in southeastern France and as recently as the new InSight observatory in New Mexico, which went online in 2017. In that time, the researchers—affiliated with the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Plane?tologie (IRAP), in Toulouse, France—concluded that the 85 observatories have generated a prodigious 20.3 million tons of CO2, or an average of 1.2 million tons per year.

Sigh. Anyway, there’s a lot of Concern from a few climate cultists over this footprint. All the fossil fuels and concrete used to construct the telescopes/observatories, how many are far from civilization, so must rely on fossil fuels for power.

The paper stresses that the astronomy community must take dramatic steps to address its carbon footprint and not simply consider it the cost of doing business. The 20.3 million tons of CO2 emitted overall by the 85 observatories is, after all, the equivalent of the annual greenhouse gas output of entire countries such as Croatia, Bulgaria or Estonia. There are ways to bring those numbers down.

“The first step,” said IRAP astronomer and co-author Lyigi Tibaldo, “is that existing structures are decarbonized, by switching to renewable energy sources.” Sun is abundant in the Atacama, making solar power a viable option. And the more the overall energy grid, especially in Europe, comes to rely on renewables, the more the telescopes located there will be able to operate without so much of a greenhouse impact. Most space-based observatories already rely on solar panels to keep them going, but a cleaner grid means their observations can be conducted and their data analyzed with a smaller carbon footprint too.

So, the paper is an advocacy one, activist, not serious science. Is anyone surprised? I suppose some cultists brainstormed what they could drag into their little cult that hadn’t been already.

Another answer, the authors argue, is to slow down the current building boom in new observatories in the Atacama and elsewhere, relying more on the astronomical infrastructure that already exists. “The strong reduction of emissions that are required in the next decade will not be achieved if we continue building new infrastructure at the pace that is occurring now,” said Tibaldo. “That will also give us more time to perform more comprehensive exploration of the data we have from existing infrastructure.”

Stop doing science, people! The Cult has spoken.

Read: New One: Astronomy Is Bad For ‘Climate Change’ »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 9 Comments | Trackback URL
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