RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-4-11-lessons-in-woke-science-cov

Over time, I have had many posts on the scientific method.  You posit a falsifiable hypothesis. Then you collect and examine the evidence. If the evidence contradicts your hypothesis you must abandon it and move on. Really, that’s the whole thing.

Then there is woke “science,” most visible these days in the arenas of response to the Covid-19 virus and of climate change. Here the principles are a little different. In woke “science” there is no falsifiable hypothesis. In place of that, we have the official orthodox consensus view. The official orthodox consensus view has been arrived at by all the smartest people, because it just seems like it must be right. The official orthodox consensus view must not be contradicted, particularly by the little people like you. Based on the official orthodox consensus view, those in power can take away all your freedom (Covid) and/or transform the entire economy (climate). After all, it’s the “science.”

But what if evidence seems to contradict the official orthodox consensus view? I’m sorry, but as I said the official orthodox consensus view must not be contradicted. Today’s news brings a couple of extreme examples of that, one on the virus front, and the other relating to climate. Both of these are from Europe, so you may not have seen them.

On the virus front, we consider the case of Germany. For some reason, Germany has been relatively lightly hit by the virus, at least so far. According to the latest from Worldometers, Germany has had 940 deaths per million population to date. This compares, for example to 2,593 deaths per million in Czechia (worst of all countries), 1,864 in the UK, and 1,732 in the U.S. But starting in about mid-March, Germany has seen a renewed “surge” of cases. Why? Some might say that the virus is just going to get you sooner or later. But on March 23 German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a new three-week “lockdown” of the strictest variety, which included the forced closing of most stores from April 1 – 5. And with that three-week period about to expire, the website No Tricks Zone (German speakers) reports today that even further extensions are under consideration:

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/04/12/national-geographics-pollution-of-scientific-discourse/

For more than a century, National Geographic has produced a high-quality magazine that is well-grounded in science, history and culture. Lately, however, the editors have allowed agenda-driven articles based on flawed research to slip in between the covers.

Take, for example, the latest piece by science writer Elizabeth Royte, which focused on the work of Jonathan Lundgren, who is portrayed as a hard-working scientist-farmer. He claims that widely used, state-of-the-art neonicotinoid insecticides “may be a threat to mammals,” as well as to bees (an allegation that has been thoroughly debunked). Considering that Royte’s article was a collaboration with the activists at the Food & Environment Reporting Network, it probably shouldn’t be surprising that Lundgren was selected as the story’s hero.

Lundgren became a martyr to the activist community following his departure from a research position at the U.S. Department of Agriculture after bending ethical rules in support of his personal agenda. Now that he’s a private citizen, his crusade against modern pesticides has accelerated.

Lundgren had already established himself as a leading critic of neonicotinoids, the most popular insecticide on the market today. At first, he argued that these chemicals were bad for bees, and so farmers ought to be required to only use “organic” pesticides. Now he’s expanding the claim to also cover all mammals, presumably including humans, based on the “singular experiment” described in the Nat Geo article.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/04/12/are-you-ready-for-bidens-ban-on-gas-powered-cars/

“The late great conservative icon M. Stanton Evans put it best: “Liberals don’t care what you do,” he quipped, “as long as it’s compulsory.”

In the next couple of months, the Environmental Protection Agency will issue new fuel economy standards that could be impossible for carmakers to meet – without going electric. That, at least, is what President Joe Biden’s EPA Administrator Michael Regan is indicating.

In an interview with Bloomberg last week, Regan talked about imposing rules that meet
“the urgency of the climate crisis,” and “did not rule out future emissions requirements that create a de facto ban on new conventional, gasoline-powered automobiles, like an explicit phase-out ordered by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.”

Regan could, for example, require automakers to sell cars that get an average of 70 mpg – something that only electric cars could meet. The most fuel-efficient hybrid on the market tops out at 59 mpg. The most efficient gas-powered car – the tiny Mitsubishi Mirage – gets 39 mpg.

The prospect of a Biden ban on gas-powered vehicles shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. As we noted last year, Biden promised voters he would do just this – impose regulations on automakers that they could only meet by selling electric cars.

As a matter of fact, he promised that on his first day in office, he’d develop “rigorous new fuel economy standards aimed at ensuring 100% of new sales for light- and medium-duty vehicles will be zero emissions.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/do-greens-want-the-world-to-be-like-the-blackout-state/?utm_source=

Electricity is essential to modernity. Prosperity depends on it. So does longevity and health. If you doubt that, ask those in impoverished nations who still don’t have access to reliable electrical power! Indeed, if we could create a continental power grid in Africa — regardless of the means — it would ameliorate so much human misery.

So, why are the world’s cities turning their lights off this weekend — as if electrification is a bad thing? To mark “Earth Hour,” of course. From the Yahoo News story:

Cities around the world were turning off their lights Saturday for Earth Hour, with this year’s event highlighting the link between the destruction of nature and increasing outbreaks of diseases like Covid-19.

Starting off the event, at 8:30 pm the skylines of Asian metropolises from Singapore to Hong Kong went dark, as did landmarks including Sydney Opera House.

The annual event calls for action on climate change and the environment, and this year, organisers said they want to highlight the link between the destruction of the natural world and the increasing incidence of diseases — such as Covid-19 — making the leap from animals to humans.

Good grief, what nonsense. Last year, California went through the wrenching experience of enforced blackouts, in part, because of the formerly Golden State’s stupid environmental policies. Do we really want more of that? Moreover, there is no proof that climate change had anything whatsoever to do with COVID.

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2021/03/21/nuclear_energy_is_a_reliable_source_that_also_shrinks_emissions_769131.html

If the near total collapse of the Texas energy grid on the morning of February 15th demonstrates anything, it proves the importance of reliable energy production. In short, federal and statepolicies that pick winners and losers among clean energy sources steered both public funding and private investment away from reliable sources. Hopefully, policymakers will learn their lesson from the events in Texas and wake up to the reality that energy security requires a diversity of reliable sources; chief among them is nuclear power.

While the cold snap froze wind turbines and forced many thermal plants offline, nuclear energy production remained remarkably reliable. In fact, reports show that only one half of a single two-reactor facility was forced offline by the cold. What’s more, this outage was an oddity among nuclear plants and was the direct result of bad management and lack of preparation. The outage at the South Texas Nuclear Power Station — one of Texas’ four nuclear plants — accounted for a mere 1,280 of the nearly 30,000 lost megawatts of production that left the state less than five minutes from a catastrophic failure.

While issues of management, preparation, and weatherization are ultimately to blame for the disaster, had the State of Texas invested more heavily in nuclear energy, the impact of the freezing temperatures may very well have been less devastating. 

Nuclear power is particularly well situated to become even more important in the coming decades. The Biden administration’s push for a “carbon pollution-free electricity sector no later than 2035,” practically necessitates increased investment in nuclear energy if we are to maintain a secure, reliable energy grid. The International Atomic Energy Agency explained it best:

“As they can operate at full capacity nearly uninterrupted, nuclear power plants can provide a continuous and reliable supply of energy. This is in contrast to variable renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, which require back-up power during their output gaps, such as when the sun sets or the wind stops blowing. Nuclear power plants can also operate flexibly to meet fluctuations in energy demand and provide stability to electrical grids, particularly those with high shares of variable renewable sources.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/24/the-climate-headline-the-legacy-media-wouldnt-dare-write/

Barack Obama’s undersecretary of energy for science has shattered the popular global warming narrative. If he had worked in the Trump administration, he’d be labeled a “denier” and hounded like a suspected witch in 17th century Massachusetts. But because he was an Obama appointee, the press simply ignores him. 

Steve Koonin, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology- and CalTech-educated physicist, said last week that “discussions of existential threat, climate crisis, climate disaster are really at odds with what the official science says in reports that are issued by the U.N. and the U.S. government.” Shouldn’t the press have picked up on this?

Koonin, in an interview on Fox Business with Larry Kudlow, busted the tale that humans are wrecking the planet and endangering themselves through their fossil-fuel burning habits.

“This is not Steve talking, this is what’s in those reports, often explicitly but sometimes a little but obscured, and you’ve got to read closely to find it.”

Koonin said there has been a single degree of warming over the last century, caused partly by man, partly by nature. He sees nothing menacing about it. He also admitted that science has a “very poor understanding” of natural long-term climate cycles, something the global warming alarmists are unwilling to acknowledge.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/03/22/democrats-introduce-new-green-new-deal-bill-calling-fossil-fuels-racist-n1434177

The Hill reports that Rep. Always On-Camera (D-New York) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Not An Actual Cherokee) have introduced a new bill that would “invest” $500 billion to “create” “green jobs.”

Use of multiple scare quotes is intentional. Neither the race-hustling professor nor AOC know much about job creation, having never created any meaningful number of non-government jobs.

Government “investing” necessarily entails government taxing, or government just printing more money, which neither the Democrats nor The Hill note. Those green jobs supposedly already exist anyway; why else would John Kerry tell the Keystone XL pipeline workers whose jobs his boss destroyed to go build solar panels?

The so-called green economy also relies extensively on mining and minerals processing, which aren’t very clean processes. In fact, those technologies depend on rare earth minerals, which mostly cannot be mined in the United States due to environmental regulations. They’re mined extensively in China, which doesn’t regulate as heavily, leaving the mining operations dirtier.

Buried in the two leftists’ announcement is this little gem.

“The BUILD GREEN Infrastructure and Jobs Act will make the big federal investments necessary to transform our country’s transportation system, confront the racial and economic inequality embedded in our fossil fuel economy, and achieve the ambitious targets for 100% clean energy in America.”

“…confront the racial and economic inequality embedded in our fossil fuel economy…”

I’m sorry, but that’s insane. It’s so illogical it’s barely possible to critique it, but here’s a try.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/fauci-blames-coronavirus-our-failure-live-harmony-daniel-greenfield/

“There’s a lot of folks who think that, due to climate change and due to the globalization in general, it is inevitable that we’ll deal with more and more viruses like this,” Dr. Fauci told Meet the Press.

The “lot of folks” in question include the patron saint of the pandemic.

In addition to appearing on every single news show on the planet, Fauci occasionally co-authors papers. But “Emerging Pandemic Diseases: How We Got to COVID-19” in the journal Cell is less of an academic paper and more of a survey and an advocacy editorial. It might not be all that significant except that its co-authors are David M. Morens, the Senior Scientific Advisor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and Fauci who heads it.

If you didn’t know that its authors are prominent figures in the scientific community, you might mistake its contents for the ravings of hippies at an Earth Day rally a generation ago.

“There are many examples where disease emergencies reflect our increasing inability to live in harmony with nature,” Fauci’s paper insists. “Living in greater harmony with nature will require changes in human behavior as well as other radical changes.”