Approval Isn’t Always Worth Getting

There was something that I heard this week that I’ve been thinking about, and expanding. I’m going to credit Andrew Klavan with what I heard, because I think it was him, although I couldn’t track it down. I re-listened to Tuesday’s show, and didn’t find it; maybe it was in Wednesday’s.

Anyway, what I think he said was that, only a non-racist culture would care whether you thought they were racist. In other words, the very fact that we find racism to be offensive, and to be called racist is damaging to our reputations, is because—We Are Not Racist.

If it were socially acceptable to be racist, it wouldn’t be possible to shame us for being racists. It has been half a century since Jim Crow laws were outlawed—and they were outlawed because most of the country recognized them as repugnant.

Vivian Malone registers as student
at University of Alabama, 1963
image from Wikipedia

There has been so little actual racism in this country that those who race-bait, who make a living from stirring up race-based hatred, need to redefine racism. And lately it has meant, if you’re born white, then you’re racist in your DNA and should be ashamed and bow down to the black race.

Think about that for a moment. You’re inferior because you’re born with a certain level of melanin in your skin, which you cannot alter. That’s actual racism.

How does that conversation go between a regular white person and a black supremacist?

White person: But, if I’m racist because I’m born that way and I can’t change it, then what do you want me to do about it?

Black supremacist: Bow down to the black person. Stop in the street and lick their boots, and apologize for your racism.

White person: But you just said I had no control over “being” racist, so what actions of mine am I apologizing for?

Black supremacist: Being white. You’re disgusting because you’re white. You’re inferior because you’re white.

White person: OK, I get it now. The color of my skin makes me an inferior, subordinate human being.

Black supremacist: Exactly.

Not that you could actually experience such a calm and reasoned conversation with someone who hates you because of your skin color. But you see the point.

So, if you fall for that accusation, and bow to the accusers in some misguided attempt to demonstrate that you are not racist—to avoid being one of those uppity white people who don’t know their place in the presence of their betters—what you’re doing is encouraging actual racism.

We’ve seen this somewhere in history before.

Racism is not the only area in which this shaming-the-innocent strategy takes place.

It’s a practice of manipulative abusers to make the abused feel like they are guilty—and are therefore required to change to earn the approval of the abuser. But, why does the abused value the approval of the abuser? Good question. Probably takes therapy to resolve.

But in day-to-day life, let’s assume you can see clearly enough not to value the opinion of someone who is attempting to manipulate you. Let’s take a look at some scenarios and imagine how some of the “reasonable” conversations would go, and maybe get some enlightenment from the thought exercise.

 

Economic Equality

image found here

Socialist scold: You have no sense of justice if you think it’s OK for some CEO to make $5 million a year while his line workers are making $40 thousand a year.

Income earner: Really? So, let me get this straight. Those line workers accepted the job for $40 thousand a year, but they were worth much much more? Why did they accept those terms?

Socialist scold: Because they didn’t have a choice?

Income earner: They didn’t? So you’re saying, they got the business degree, and the experience to run a company, and were willing to take on the risk, but they were, at that point, prevented from doing anything but taking a $40 thousand a year line worker job? How could such an injustice happen?

Socialist scold: Well, it wasn’t like that. It was just the systemic unfairness of it all.

Income earner: So a line worker should be paid more than the value he brings in for the company, and the CEO should be paid less than the value he brings in for the company—because that would mean everybody got treated fairly?

Socialist scold: Right.

Income earner: I get it now. Fairness is getting more than you deserve if you’re a person You favor, but fairness is getting less than you deserve if you’re a person You don’t favor.

Socialist scold: Exactly.

 

Climate Change

Greta Thunberg
image credit: Aaron Schwartz, found here

Climate scold: You hate the world and want to kill everybody if you don’t agree with the “climate science consensus” that says we need to totally eliminate fossil fuels. You climate denier! Get with the program and get behind the Green New Deal!

Rational human: So, I’m in denial if I notice that all the things in the Green New Deal will cause worldwide devastation, economic deprivation, starvation, and all? I hate the world if I don’t think all buildings need to be torn down or retrofitted? And all our cars and other transportation should be electric? And I shouldn’t notice that electric cars actually use more energy and create more waste than gasoline-powered cars? Am I on the right track now?

Climate scold: You’re getting there.

Rational human: And I shouldn’t notice that natural gas from fracking is responsible for most of the improvement in air standards over the past decade?

Climate scold: Fracking is evil! Say it after me: Fracking. Is. Evil.

Rational human: OK, then. What about nuclear, because, if you’re looking for a clean and safe energy source…

Climate scold: How dare you! No nuclear! Do you want to kill us all?

Rational human: No, I don’t actually want to kill us all.

Climate scold: Then stop being a science denier, and stop using anything but renewables.

Rational human: Like wind? I shouldn’t notice they cause a tremendous amount of waste and kill birds and don’t produce reliable steady energy?

Climate scold: Stop denying science!

Rational human: Sorry. What was I thinking?

Climate scold: Don’t bother thinking; we’ve done that for you. Just stop being evil and stupid and hating the planet.

Rational human: I think I get what you’re saying now.

 

Same-Sex Marriage

image from here

Woke scold: You’re intolerant if you don’t approve of gay marriage.

Decent person: I’ve been intolerant? In what way?

Woke scold: You have to approve of gay marriage and the gay lifestyle. You have to stop shoving your beliefs down the throat of others with different beliefs.

Decent person: Pardon me? How was I doing that?

Woke scold: By believing in traditional marriage, for one. You want to exclude gays from privileges everyone else has.

Decent person: Really? Were gays prevented from marrying an unmarried person of the opposite sex who was not a close relative—which is what the law has been for heterosexuals?

Woke scold: Don’t be obtuse. You know what I mean. You prevented them from marrying the person of their choice.

Decent person: Well, if you mean I was a not changing the definition of marriage to something that it never was, so that it would include their choice, then I guess that’s accurate. But then, if marriage is just a declaration of current sexual partnership, with no permanence, exclusivity, or procreative possibility—so, something other than marriage—wouldn’t it be better to just come up with some other name for what they want, rather than pretend marriage has suddenly become something different?

Woke scold: You’re just homophobic?

Decent person: I need you to help me understand. What do you mean by that?

Woke scold: You’re against gays. You’re so evil that you’d probably kill them if you thought you could get away with it.

Decent person: I’m sad you think I’m a murderous insane person for believing what people have believed for all the millennia of recorded history. But, what is it, again, I need to do to gain your approval?

Woke scold: Give up your stupid religious beliefs and support everything the LGBTQ+ community wants. And if you don’t, you should not be allowed to work or function in society; you should be cancelled.

Decent person: So, I should stop believing what I believe, and allow the LGBTQ+ agenda to be shoved down my throat, so I don’t get accused of shoving my beliefs down someone else’s throat?

Woke scold: Exactly.

 

Transphobia

The last one touched on the T in LGBTQ+, but let’s take that one separately.

Woke scold: You’re cruel and hurtful if you don’t accept what a trans person says they are.

Rational human: Oh, my! So, help me understand. Even if I’m compassionate toward them, and respectful and courteous, I’m still cruel if I don’t actually believe a person’s biological sex can be changed?

Woke scold: Imagine what they’re going through. All the ways this world rejects them and tries to tell them they’re not who they identify as. And all you need to do is admit that they’re no longer a woman when they have become a man, or no longer a man when they’ve become a woman—oh, and you need to refer to them with the pronouns of their choice, even if it’s a neutral made up pronoun like ze or zer.

Rational human: So, should I be OK with allowing them to go into whatever private space they want, including showing their, um, male genitalia in a locker room with other females whom the former male is still attracted to?

Woke scold: Of course. You shouldn’t even have to ask that.

Rational human: Sorry. I’m still trying to get the hang of waking up to being woke. So, what happens if the trans “woman” gets prostate cancer? Is it illegal to treat for a male problem now that he—er, she—is no longer male?

Woke scold: No, you’d just treat that particular woman who happens to have a prostate.

Rational human: What if a trans “man” still has a uterus and gets pregnant?

Woke scold: Then the world celebrates how great it is that a man with a uterus gives birth. Not that this should be considered a rare thing; some men have uteruses; some women have prostates, etc.

Rational human: Then, is it allowed to notice that a trans “woman” still has a Y chromosome in every cell of their body?

Woke scold: Irrelevant.

Rational human: Oh. So, I should deny biology and just go with whatever the person says on a given day?

Woke scold: Right. And if you don’t, you evil transphobe, you shouldn’t be allowed to make a living, or have any free speech; you should be cancelled.

Rational human: Because I’d be so intolerant?

Woke scold: Exactly.

 

Abortion

Let’s do one more.

ultrasound image, from here

Feminist scold: If you don’t agree with abortion—paid for by taxpayers—up to at least birth, then you hate women, and you’re anti-freedom of choice.

Pro-lifer: I wouldn’t want to be hateful or anti-freedom of choice. But it’s kind of an adjustment to killing babies.

Feminist scold: They’re not babies until they’re outside the womb; up until then they’re just fetuses, which means they’re nothing more than a clump of cells.

Pro-lifer: So they suddenly become a living human being by crossing the birth canal?

Feminist scold: It becomes a baby when and if the woman wants it to be a baby.

Pro-lifer: So, if the woman wants a baby, then it’s a baby in the womb, but if she doesn’t want it, then she can decide it isn’t a baby? At any point during gestation?

Feminist scold: At least that long; we should have a conversation about what to do with one the woman decides she doesn’t want after she sees it. I mean, what if it’s badly deformed, or has a disability, or the wrong color eyes or something?

Pro-lifer: Um. Wrong color eyes?

Feminist scold: We need to stay open-minded; it’s the woman’s decision, not yours.

Pro-lifer: So, just to be clear, it’s not a human life when it’s a human embryo, or when it gets a heartbeat, or when it grows hair and fingernails, or when it can feel pain, or when it is developed enough to be viable outside the womb?

Feminist scold: Only if the woman says so.

Pro-lifer: The father of the baby doesn’t have any input?

Feminist scold: How dare you! Of course not.

Pro-lifer: So, I hate women if I don’t want to pay for a woman to kill her offspring? And I’m anti-choice if I would prefer to protect life once it has begun, or—Baal[i] forbid—consider giving the biological father any say?

Feminist scold: Now you’re getting it. And if you don’t go along entirely, then you should be prevented from making a living, or speaking your hateful, offensive words anywhere; you should be cancelled.

Pro-lifer: Because I’ve been so intolerant?

Feminist scold: Exactly.

 

For the sake of your sanity, ask yourself, do you really care about getting the approval of someone who wants to bully you into shame for believing these things?

·         Character matters much more than skin color, and diversity of thought is more valuable than diversity of skin color. You’re not racist if you believe this.

·         Science isn’t settled unless all the data is in, and policy based on unsettled science is about power and politics. You’re not anti-science, or anti-earth, if you believe this.

·         Marriage, with permanence, exclusivity, and the possibility of offspring being raised by their own mother and father, is an inherent good to society. You’re not unfair, uncaring, or intolerant for believing this.

·         Biological reality is more real than someone’s mental image of themselves. You’re not unfair, uncaring, or intolerant for believing this.

·         A human life within the womb is not the same person as the pregnant woman; her “choice” ended sometime before the beginning of that second human life. You’re not anti-woman or anti-freedom of choice for believing this.

My guess is, if you believe these things, you’re already a better human being than the manipulator trying to shame you for those beliefs.

---

[i] The ancient idolatrous god, required child sacrifice according to Jeremiah 19:3-5.

How Dare You!

You’ve probably heard the teenage Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, with her quite good English, addressing the world from the Climate Action Summit 2019, as if she were an expert with something important to say. But it’s just an emotional screed. However, the first several sentences of her speech, surprisingly, I totally agree with. I’ll highlight the sentences I think are spot on:

Greta Thunberg, screenshot from here

This is all wrong!

I shouldn’t be up here!

I should be back in school, on the other side of the ocean!

Yet, you have come to us young people for hope! How dare you!

You have stolen my dreams, and my childhood, with your empty words!

Yet, I’m one of the lucky ones!

People are suffering! People are dying!

Entire ecosystems are collapsing!

We are in the beginning of a mass extinction! And all you can talk about is money! And fairy tales of eternal economic growth!

How dare you!

For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear!

How dare you continue to look away, and come here, saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight?

You say that you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But, no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that, because, if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil! And that I refuse to believe!

The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in ten years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control. Fifty percent may be acceptable to you, but those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution, or the aspects of equity climate justice. They also rely on my generation’s sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist. So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us—we who have to live with the consequences!

To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees of global temperature rise, the best odds given by the IPCC, the world had 420 gigatons left to emit, back on January 1^st, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.

How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just business as usual and some technical solutions!

With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within 8 ½ years. There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable—and you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is!

You are failing us! But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you! And if you choose to fail us, I say, We will never forgive you!

We will not let you get away with this! Right here, right now, is where we draw the line! The world is waking up! And change is coming, whether you like it or not!

That’s her entire speech. I transcribed, so it was my choice to put in the exclamation points, but I think I was fair and only did that when she was exclaiming. It’s 477 words. The speech took just under five minutes. So she spoke at a haltingly slow 100 words per minute. By comparison, average speeches are probably around 135-150 wpm. Ben Shapiro approaches 200 on a daily basis. English is not her native language, so we’ll give her some leeway for that, and also the occasional applause time she had to wait through. But a speech that slow has a particular purpose: drama.

This was about the optics of a girl, all emotion, drumming up sympathy for a particular way of thinking.

Her speech was written. By her? I’ve read a lot of student papers from people her age and up into college, and even in their native language, they’re probably incapable of inciting this much emotion. They are likely to contain about this many “facts,” or data points, not usually discovered themselves, but coming from some source they ought to cite, if they’ve produced something in writing. And one would hope for the majority of the facts to be actually true, if the piece is to be persuasive. But if you don’t have the facts on your side, then a poor child in pain over the existential worry is what you’ve got. What a bonus if you can get her to cry as she delivers the words!

In other words, I think someone wrote it for her. Which brings me to where I agree with her: How dare you! Whoever fed her this propaganda, and incited her to this much painful emotion, depriving her of her childhood, as she has pointed out—you are quite possibly just evil.

There are reasons that someone my age should not take science scolding from a teenager. Take a look at this cartoon—listing actual pronouncements.

Cartoon by Rick McKee, November 11, 2014

I remember these. If you’re familiar with George Orwell’s 1984, you remember how they rewrote history, replacing all past references and moving forward with new “truth,” as if the old words had never existed. We have watched this happen in my lifetime related to climate change.

image found here

Let me add that, when we were dealing with CO (carbon monoxide) emissions, an actual poison gas, it made sense to try to bring that down. We did. And then, quite suddenly, mention of CO turned into CO2 (carbon dioxide), which is not a poison. It is what we exhale and plants inhale. It’s a natural part of our environment. From the people who suddenly told us we were no longer worried about global cooling, but were supposed to be frantically worried about global warming, we were told to worry about the killing power of the air we and other living things breathe.

I’m experienced enough to be skeptical.

The cultish belief that our earth’s climate is doomed because of human activity, and the only way to preserve the earth is to sacrifice human lives and livelihoods—is NOT my religious belief. And, in a country that guarantees religious freedom, I resent having this pagan religion forced upon me—with scorn, name-calling, blame, shame, and coercion heaped upon any non-adherents.

The climate(s) around the world change. To slip in that term, instead of warming or cooling, which unreliably failed to happen as modeled, is a clever ploy—to anyone not paying attention.

Since I care about my environment, and the beauties of this earth that is my home, of course I want to take care of it. Not so that all creatures except humans can enjoy it; that is antithetical to the way any species should instinctively behave. But so that we humans can enjoy it.

image found here

So, cleaning up air pollution is worth doing. But when we do that and it’s never enough, and the only way to get even a tiny incremental improvement is to return to pre-industrial times—that doesn’t seem right. Especially since the evidence shows, the more industrialized a country becomes, the more capable it becomes of eradicating pollution and disease.

The cleanest, safest energy source we have is nuclear. Most of Europe knows this. But climate activists here have fought the building new nuclear plants for decades. (There are, however, two under construction since 2017.) Instead they want more solar and wind—which, at this point both are more costly to the environment than coal and natural gas energy and remain unreliably dependent on wind and sunlight.

I used to live where we had both nuclear and hydroelectric power. We never had a power outage, in the nine years we lived there. Other than the occasional tree falling on a power line, no one else in the vicinity had outages either. But hydroelectric was fought against for the sake of the fish. And nuclear was fought against—because it scares people who don’t understand it. (See this expression of reasoning by presidential candidate Marianne Williamson.) 

Young Miss Greta Thunberg, you have been deceived. Someone told you that the science is settled and has been crystal clear for 30 years; it is not, and you do not even have the life experience to know better. Someone told you that humans producing CO2 is an existential threat; it is not. Someone told you all the things you’re upset about, and convinced you that you’re now some kind of expert. You’re not. I could join you, but for this opposite reason, and say to them, “How dare you!”

Found this in my representative's Facebook

But, for the sake of your education, and the many others who have been likewise duped into traumatic existential misery, I suggest you educate yourself on what you’ve missed.

A good starting point is Prager University. These five-minute videos, presented by actual scientists, who don’t all agree even with each other, is worthwhile. Take the quiz and look up the study guide attached to each one. There’s even a transcript, if you need it in writing:

PragerU Videos

·         “Climate Change: What's So Alarming?”  Bjorn Lomborg      

·         “Climate Change: What Do Scientists Say?”  Richard Lindzen   

·         “Can Climate Models Predict Climate Change?”  Will Happer  

·         “Is Climate Change Our Biggest Problem?”  Bjorn Lomborg   

·         “Do 97% of Climate Scientists Really Agree?”  Alex Epstein   

·         “What They Haven't Told You about Climate Change”  Patrick Moore  

·         “What's the Deal with the Green New Deal?”  Alex Epstein  

There’s more. Just this month, probably because of the Climate Action Summit 2019, my newsfeed filled up with pieces by others, like me, with a little more perspective to safeguard us from yet another wolf cry of existential threat within a decade unless we turn over all power to the government—which, you might suppose is the purpose of those cries. Here are a few pieces worth reading:

·         “Canada’s global warming models threw out actual historical data and substituted models of what the temperature should have been,” Thomas Lifson, for American Thinker, September 22, 2019. He asks, “If global warming is not a fraud, why do the promoters of it so often do the sorts of things that fraudsters do?” 

·         “Doomsdays that didn’t happen: Think tank compiles decades’ worth of dire climate predictions,” Sam Dorman, for Fox News, September 18, 2019. 

·         “Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions,” Myron Ebell and Steven J. Milloy, for Competitive Enterprise Institute blog,  September 18, 2019 

·         “NASA Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice SheetGreater than Losses," last updated August 6, 2017, by NASA Official Brian Dunbar, edited by Rob Garner.  The report is a few years old, but updates continue.

·         “Socialism, Not Climate Change, Is the Real Threat,” Emma Roberts, for RealClear Politics, September 24, 2019. 

That last one is by a 17-year-old homeschooler from Liberty, Texas. A lot less emotion, a lot more data. Good to see in someone so young. While I don’t, as Thunberg accuses, “go to young people for hope,” not even sure what she means. But this Texas teen inspires hope.

There’s a book a came upon a year or two ago, when the author spoke at a local gathering. It makes no attempt to be politically correct, but it contains a wealth of data—all from known sources. The list of further reading in the back, plus the notes documenting every chapter, could keep you reading on up through college. It’s The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism, by Steve Goreham, © 2012, New Lenox Books, available at www.climatism.net.

I could probably dig up a few more very good pieces I’ve accumulated over the years. But I think this is enough to get a person started on the path to freedom from the cultish indoctrination.

I don’t really know what the climate will do. No one else does either. But being in abject fear over people driving cars or using plastic straws—that’s not a good way to live a life. No young person should be deprived of their childhood just because they’re an easy emotional target due to their lack of knowledge and perspective. Education—and time—are a cure for that condition.

In Case of Panic, Breathe

Yesterday President Trump announced the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, and the world is in turbulence today.

Panic, generally, does not lead to good results. So I thought I’d comment today in an effort to encourage calm.

Because the Spherical Model is about the interrelationships of the political, economic, and social spheres, I’ll try to cover all three aspects (which are somewhat mixed, because of their interrelationships).

Our beautiful world includes climates that change.
This was a normal Utah winter, 2013.

First, the political perspective—the freedom-related issues. The agreement was not your typical international treaty. In December 2015, when then-president Obama signed on, he did something that we Americans don’t give our presidents power to do: he signed onto an international treaty without passing it along to the legislative branch for agreement. It’s not that he signed a treaty, sent it to Congress, and they disagreed with him, so they voted it down. He never sent it—never intended to send it.

Another oddity of the agreement was that it was set up with a 4-year back-out period. Like a major purchase in which you have three days to cancel the contract. He did this a year and a month before a new president would be sworn in. In other words, the whole thing was a PR stunt, not law. He knew it would not stand. He was just posturing before the elites of the world that he wanted to impress.

If he had truly believed that we are in dire straits, and this accord would be the only way to save the world, wouldn’t he have simply made the case? Instead, he, along with other elites, tried to shut down the conversation. Anyone who questions the line we’re being given, or asks for data and evidence and convincing, has been labeled a “climate denier.”

Jeffrey A. Tucker, of the Foundation for Economic Education, offered this explanation:

Let me pause to protest this “denial” language. It attempts to appropriate the widely shared disgust toward “Holocaust denial,” a bizarre and bedraggled movement that belittles or even dismisses the actual history of one of the 20th century’s most egregious mass crimes against human rights and dignity. Using that language to silence questions about an attempt to centrally plan the energy sector is a moral low that debases the language of denial.

This rhetorical trick reveals all you need to know about the desperate manipulation the climate planners are willing to engage in to realize their plot regardless of popular and justified skepticism concerning their regulatory and redistributionist policies.

I’m not an expert, or a scientist. But I have a good enough mind that, if things are explained to me, I can understand them. Here’s what I think I know. Climate changes. All the time. The earth has not always been the way it is now. We’re in a warming cycle—that we’ve been in since the Little Ice Age, which we are still coming out of (it was from 1300-1850, following a warm period from 900-1300). In this rising trend, there are shorter warming and cooling periods, roughly 30 years each. We were in a cooling segment from about 1942 to 1977, and then temperatures rose from about 1977 to 2005. Overall, since then temperatures have been flat or slightly cooling.

Chart citation[i]

This trend has been happening since before the Industrial Revolution. And far before the predominance of gas-powered vehicles and fossil-fuel powered electricity and heating.

I remember being a young woman and hearing scientists convince us we were in a global cooling period—because of pollutants like carbon monoxide in the atmosphere. They were trying to get funding to put particulates into the atmosphere, to create a beneficial greenhouse effect. This was, I believe, before the end of the warming segment.

And then, almost as suddenly as it had started, that talk ended (coinciding, ironically, with the period of stasis or slight cooling that we’re still in); we were in a deadly warming period, because of greenhouse gases—mainly carbon dioxide. I did a double take the first time I heard that. “You mean carbon monoxide, don’t you? Because that’s a poison. But carbon dioxide is just what we breathe out and plants breathe in.” No, we need to disregard the science we thought we knew for this sudden new science.

So, when I ask for data and convincing, there’s good reason.

How much of the atmosphere is greenhouse gases? 1-2%. Mostly it’s nitrogen and oxygen.

How much of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is CO₂? 19%. Greenhouse gases are 75% water vapor and clouds. In the atmosphere as a whole, C0₂ is a trace gas, only 4/10,000 molecules.

And the next question is, how much does the trace gas carbon dioxide affect the climate—and is that bad or good? In general, we’re in a lot more danger as humans from cold than we are from warm. A degree or two might mean greater land mass available for growing food, and better plant growth. (I was recently told cannabis growers know this, so they pump in C0₂ to improve crop yields.) So it’s not necessarily catastrophic, even if true.

But if, for the sake of questioning, we say that C0₂ has an effect, how much? Haven’t there been fluctuations that appear independent from C0₂ levels? So we’re not even sure of that cause-effect assumption.

The CO2 line is too thin to show up on the chart.
I developed the chart from information in a book.[ii]

Then, how much of the C0₂ is manmade? 3%. Nature put more C0₂ into the atmosphere every day than all of us.

Do humans play a role, then, in climate change? Yes, but only negligibly. Like how, when you jump up, not only are you exerting a force that moves you away from the earth, but you are exerting a force that moves the earth away from you. True. I learned it in a science class. When two bodies have nearly equal mass, you can see the effect better, but when they are very disparate, as between the mass of earth and you, your effect on the earth is so small as to be hard to measure.

There are other parts of the climate change crisis that I question.

Ice has been melting in the Arctic; it’s at a 30-year low. (Polar bear populations, incidentally, have grown from 22,000 in 1960 to 31,000 today, doing better with less ice.) Greenland is losing ice around the edges, but it’s getting thicker in the center, so it’s stable. Ice in Antarctica, which contains 90% of the earth’s ice, is at a 30-year high.

Every computer model has been wrong. Instead of assuming “but now they’re right,” maybe we should go back to find out why they deviated from reality and fix that before we trust them.

The Paris Climate Accord would require that US emissions be limited by 83%[iii]. That would be lowering emissions by 1.5 tons per person—a sacrifice that is countered by nature twenty-fold every day.

If we could return to pre-1870 technology levels, then, by the end of the century, using the most generous of computer models (which include much more severe cutbacks in emissions following 2030 than have yet been agreed to), then we might have a slight effect on only 1% of the assumed greenhouse effect. A century’s worth of worldwide technology dieting could be wiped out by a single major volcanic eruption. In dieting terms, that’s enough to send you to the freezer to drown your frustrations with your own personal gallon of ice cream.

The cutbacks required of the US are much greater than for other nations. Our economy would be drastically affected. Our energy sector would be emasculated. Anyone who thinks we could simply shift to other energy sources, like wind and solar, are mistaken. While I’m in favor of innovation, the cost to the environment for these alternatives is currently greater than that of fossil fuels.

Climatism (not climate-related science, but the thing you’re not allowed to question) looks to me like a pagan religion. The sacrifices being required of us in the essentially vain hope that such sacrifices will appease the climate gods look eerily similar to throwing people into the volcano. It might make people feel like they have some control over something out of their power, but it doesn’t actually affect an eruption—and it’s really bad for the ones who get thrown into the volcano.

So, if you were in favor of the Paris Climate Accord, you were in favor of ceding American sovereignty to foreign sources, allowing them to impose limitations on us that would in the short-term require us to limit ourselves to second-world status, and eventually to third-world conditions, and we would get out of in only the satisfaction that we had appeased the climate panickers.

Our president thought that was a bad deal.

As Tucker sums up:

A global agreement that somehow binds entire countries to centrally plan and regulate the whole of a crucial sector of economic life that supports all economic advances of our time—at the very time when the energy sector is innovating its own solutions to carbon emissions in the cheapest possible way—is certainly going to breed resentment, and for good reason. It is a bad and unworkable idea.

The Paris Climate Accord was bad for freedom, bad for the economy, and bad religion. So, let’s not panic. Let’s breathe—even though you’re going to exhale C0₂. And maybe do a better job of scientific conversation going forward.

  

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[i] This chart was adapted from Climate4You, www.climate4you.com/ . I found it in The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism, by Steve Goreham, © 2012, p. 67.

[ii] Gorham, pp. 83-83.

[iii] Gorham, p. 18, which takes population data from N. C. Aizenman, “U.S. to Grow Grayer, More Diverse,” Washington Post, Aug. 14, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/13/AR2008081303524.html

Money and Ideology

A couple of weeks ago I was driving home from a conference and had the radio on the Houston public radio station. I know… but I’d had it on earlier for Prairie Home Companion and hadn’t thought to change it. Plus, there aren’t many better options on a Saturday evening. The show was called Living on Earth; I hadn’t heard of it before. My expectation, naturally, was that there would be a liberal perspective, and probably “green” thinking—pro-government intervention to limit use of fossil fuel energy technologies. No surprises there, but there was a segment that got me arguing back to the radio, even though I knew not to take it seriously.

Logo from here

There were a couple of things that were interesting in this segment, called “Secret Cash for Climate Denial.” One is that the interviewer, Steve Curwood, whom I would assume would have an agenda or he wouldn’t do this job, asked questions that helped us see the truth and kept his tone unbiased. The other is that the interviewee, Suzanne Goldenberg, was honest in ways liberals are only when they assume everyone listening agrees with them.

It was a bit like a Dilbert cartoon, where everyone actually says what they think. Her complaint was that there are nonprofit organizations that send money to organizations seeking to argue against “climate change” legislation—“climate denial” is the phrase used, as a comparison to holocaust denial.

Goldenberg admitted that what these organizations do is lawful. She also admitted that there is a corollary on the left—the Tides Foundation.

So, she knows it’s legal, and she approves of whatever the Tides Foundation does. But the reason it’s wrong for the conservative organizations is because she disagrees with them. Yes, she was that clear about it. A little background, and then I’ll quote her.

Her complaint is that organizations called Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund give exclusively to conservative causes. (They are apparently closely aligned and can be considered essentially a single entity; their mission statements, here and here, are nearly identical.)

According to the story, the amount has been $400 Million over the past decade, with a quarter of that, $100 Million, going, as she puts it, “to about 100 different organizations that have worked to undermine the science behind climate change, or have worked to block action on climate change.” Personally, I wouldn’t use the term “undermine the science,” but simply presenting the opposing scientific view, because, despite her belief, proof that humans are causing catastrophic climate change is anything but settled. So I would see this use of money as a positive. If I had oodles of cash to hand out to chosen nonprofit projects, I might look into these.

To clarify, looking at the decade as a whole looks bigger, so let’s simplify to annual numbers: total annual intake by these two or more groups: $40 Million; total going toward discussion over climate science: $10 Million. I know to most of us $10 Million is a lot of money. But it could probably support only about a dozen or so employees plus capital expenses such as office space, technology, and some travel.

For comparison, I went to the one liberal organization she mentioned, which gives almost exclusively to liberal causes, the Tides Foundation. A simple Google search took me to a summary from a couple of years ago. The Tides Foundation intake in 2009 was $115,887,921. There’s also an additional Tides group called the Tides Center, which took in $60,111,511 that year. Putting the two together, Tides takes in about $176 Million, about 4 ½ times Donor funds.

This source shows a hint of disapproval toward the liberal agenda, but the information seems to be accurate. They say the Tides Center specializes in helping new organizations, so that, under their umbrella, new organizations can put off getting their own tax-exempt status right away, and also receive help with running a business, applying for grants, and running PR campaigns. In addition, the Tides Center serves as a firewall protecting the Tides Foundation from lawsuits from people harmed by Foundation-funded projects.

The Tides Center’s board chairman is Wade Rathke, who is also a member of the Tides Foundation board, as well as a leader in SEIU and what was ACORN. A year or so ago, Glenn Beck went into detail about these organizations and the incestuous connections with myriad socialist organizations, and close ties to George Soros. I’ll let his research suffice. But Tides undeniably promotes a surprisingly large number of leftist agenda projects. From 1996-2010, the Center (in addition to whatever the even larger Foundation did) supported 677 separate projects (200 just in 2010), with a total of $522.4 Million—for an average of $34.8 Million per year (counting 1996 and 2010 inclusively, making 15 years). Am I making it clear that just the Tides organizations dwarf in size the Donor funds?

A particular favorite Tides project type is radical environmentalism, but I don’t have a specific amount going for that, so we can’t do a direct comparison. Other favorite causes are anti-war, anti-free trade, anti-firearms ownership, anti-death penalty, pro-government-funded abortion on demand, and LBGT promotion. It would be difficult to come up with a project I did not strongly oppose, based on what I know to be true, and what I believe is right. I don't believe they promote anything that leads to political freedom, economic prosperity, and thriving civilization (maybe the occasional classical music program, perhaps).

So that puts me in an opposite but parallel position to Suzanne Goldenberg. Here is the exchange where she discloses her actual complaint:

CURWOOD: Conservatives aren’t the only ones that use anonymous donor mechanisms; liberals do as well. What's, what's the problem here?

GOLDENBERG: To me that the main difference is the causes they’re supporting. When you're talking about science—when you're talking about the facts of climate science—the two sides aren't equivalent. And I don't think that it's legitimate to say putting out information about science is one thing and putting out information that is factually wrong is just as valid. Because they clearly aren’t. I think as a society we’d be concerned if organizations were taking secret money to go out and say, hey, smoke as many cigarettes as you like, it won't hurt you; hey, be afraid when you use a public washroom, you can get HIV aids from toilet seats. I think it's a very different thing when you're talking about putting out information that is factually incorrect, and you're doing that in a secretive fashion.

I am amused when she says she disagrees that “putting out information about science is one thing and putting out information that is factually wrong is just as valid,” because I agree with her. I do think it’s wrong to take in secretive money with the specific purpose of putting out information that is factually incorrect. It’s just that she believes things to be facts that are not, and I am skeptical of what she calls “consensus,” which is anathema to scientific discovery.

If I were like Suzanne Goldenberg, I would say that we should keep the laws for conservative organizations, because I agree with them, but I think we should refer to the liberal ones as nefarious secret cash being laundered into harmful causes, and should therefore be outlawed. That’s what I would say if I didn’t believe in free speech and I trusted the government to scrutinize the beliefs of any organization so it could ban what it disagreed with.

But, then, free speech is one of those “outré” concepts of us “extremists” who believe in that old Constitution. Not something the liberals take seriously. There are a lot of things liberals claim are true, and they believe they can make it true by saying it loudly, over and over and over, and attacking any source of opposing views. What we need is better awareness, better questioning. And more truth telling is also good. What we definitely don’t need is a government stepping in to police our beliefs and ban dissent.

Measuring Mitt Part II

Mitt Romney with some of the family,
from Parade Magazine article, here

Back on June 13^th I covered a quote from Mitt Romney that Rush Limbaugh dredged up yesterday, claiming it was disqualifying. It’s about climate change. Rush quoted a paragraph in which Romney acknowledges that many experts believe the climate is warming, and that human actions may contribute; Romney acknowledges this—and Rush ends the quote. But it was only an introduction to Romney’s policy statement. He talked about the economy being a priority. He’s against cap and trade schemes. And while he likes alternative renewable energies, the immediate need is to drill for oil and natural gas here in the US, as the only way to alleviate our dependence on foreign oil. His actions as governor of Massachusetts verified that his beliefs are much closer to Sarah Palin’s than Al Gore’s. But you wouldn’t know that if all you heard was the clip Rush aired—and which was the total provided in most news at the time.

When you hear Romney in full, it turns out he’s really a conservative, pro-Constitution, pro-free-enterprise American. So why do we so seldom hear him in full?

I think there’s a style issue—not good or bad; it just is. Romney acknowledges the opposition; he expresses what they believe, to let all parties know he’s listening to them, that he has fully examined the information, and that he does not dismiss their viewpoint out of hand. Then he goes on to express his policy position, based on the priorities he believes are best for all. So, on a number of issues, when he is doing the preface, the “I see your point of view and understand your concerns” part, he gets quoted by media and other opposition looking for sound bites that work toward their goals, rather than the ones that best express his actual positions.

It might be that I am being too generous, that what he is doing is playing to all sides. But I don’t think so. If you do believe that, try suspending your belief on some of the so-called flip-flops to separate preface from policy statement.

The most cited actual policy change is on abortion, so let’s take that one. Mitt has always said that his personal position is pro-life; it would be best if there never had to be any abortion. But you’ve probably seen quotes of him back when he was running against Ted Kennedy in 1994, or for Massachusetts governor in 2002, saying things that sound pleasing to a “pro-choice” (anti-life) crowd. I am not in favor of saying whatever you have to say, whether you mean it or not. But the circumstances of these quotes were in response to direct questioning about how he would govern in a state with an 85% Democrat congress. Everyone knew he was conservative; they don’t vote for conservatives there—that was a given. But they were in dire need of someone with Mitt’s business skills to bring the state out of a spiral toward bankruptcy. And he knew he could serve the state well. So he was assuring them that his goals as governor were mainly limited to economic issues; he was not planning to conduct a crusade against abortion, which was settled in the law for the time being. What he promised them was that he would not take action as governor to further limit abortions—actions he couldn’t have accomplished with the congress in that state anyway.

Let’s put this in the form of preface and policy, with me paraphrasing for him (so quotes aren’t his actual words; they’re my suppositions of what he meant): “I understand that, as a state of mostly Democrats, you have a belief at odds with my own concerning abortion. But I also understand the law stands, and changing it in this state is neither within my ability nor is it my purpose in running for office. I believe I can serve this state well economically. In order to have that opportunity, I promise not to try to further limit abortion while I am in office.” His policy, then, isn’t purposely to protect abortion; it is to avoid acting at variance with the overwhelming majority of the state on that issue, despite his personal beliefs.

What did he actually do in office? A law came before him intended to make it even easier to get an abortion in the state. He looked at this; it put him in the position of not just leaving the laws as it stood, but in bringing about more abortions than would have happened without the change. That meant he himself would be responsible for abortions happening. He vetoed the bill.

In reality he has a perfect pro-life record. Facing this dilemma did in fact lead to a change in his policy. While he kept his promise to the state, he came to realize that coming out against abortion, and pressing for legislation, either state by state or nationally (including overturning Roe v. Wade), would be necessary to keep legislation such as he faced in Massachusetts from causing more damage.

Is that a flip-flop? I don’t think so. It is technically a subtle change in policy—in the right direction.

Back in the 90s Romney used the phrase that he believed abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” We all know, because of Bill Clinton, that the phrase is code for “abortion on demand.” But that doesn’t mean it always meant that. The timing of Romney’s saying it was when it still likely meant only when the mother’s life (and usually then also the baby’s life) was at risk, or in cases of rape and incest—which means that the mother never made the choice to act in a way that could bring about pregnancy; her body was used against her will. We can argue the validity of that point of view another day, but I believe the only GOP candidate who doesn’t hold this view is Cain, who believes there should be no exceptions at all for any abortion. Romney’s, not Cain’s, is the typical conservative viewpoint.

Romney has consistently held that view, then, for a couple of decades or longer. The only change was whether, as an elected official, he could promise not to deal with the issue. He found that even in Massachusetts he had to face it, and at every level he has been unfailingly pro-life.

This is the one issue conservatives think they know for certain against Romney. But they’re wrong. So maybe there are more of those things, as Reagan says, “It’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” My goal is not to be an apologist [i.e., one who argues in defense of something or someone, not to be confused with making excuses for]for Romney; my goal is to find out what’s true, about him and the other candidates. To that end, measuring Romney will probably take at least another post or two.

I still believe most of our candidates agree on most conservative issues. And we’re fortunate that all of them understand that they can only appeal to voters by expressing conservative ideas. So our efforts are to identify the best one for our country—all of whom would be better than their eventual opponent.