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  • Preventable Global Warming is a Tricky Business (updated 23sep15)

    George Rebane

    [Brian Hamilton, editor of The Union, emailed me that this piece was bit too long for their Other Voices columns, and invited me to shorten it.  I felt that a better alternative to abbreviation was to write them a letter-to-editor that cited Mr Paul Berger’s dismissal of my previous OV column, and which also pointed to this post – look for it in The Union.  Thanks for your interest.]

    The Preventable Global Warming (PGW) season is here again with another spate of conferences, new laws and regulations, media events, and VIP visits, all happening in short order to reignite public apprehension that man’s neglect will soon cause a worldwide catastrophe.  To prevent the calamity, timely intervention in human activities on a massive scale is now required.  However, some considerable number of people remains skeptical of the PGW arguments and its prescribed remedies.  The public debate about PGW today reaches from the highest levels of government down the lowest grassroots as witnessed here in our little community.

    PGW is an extremely complex issue both in the technical and political sense, and made more so by the several confusing interchangeable names we use and don’t differentiate – climate change, global warming, anthropogenic global warming (AGW), … .  In this limited space I’ll try to shine a little light on some of the particulars.  First, every reputable skeptic acknowledges that climate change is always going on, and during the last couple of centuries the earth has again warmed.  Over longer timespans the earth has been much warmer (think Greenland) and much colder.

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  • Sandbox – 18sep15

    [Aren't the market mavens wonderful?  They ascribe its latest dive to Yellen's keeping the interest rates unchanged (as I predicted), citing that this contributes to market uncertainty.  Well, it apparently didn't contribute to market uncertainty when it was uncertain whether the Fed would raise rates in September, but now that it's certain that they won't, it contributes to uncertainty.  How do these turkeys continue to draw a paycheck, and who believes a word they say about markets or the economy's future?  Most certainly the Fed has destroyed whatever credibility it once had – as posted here – in knowing enough about the economy to predict its direction (note their sterling job on forecasting the recovery).  So what do you think they now base their decisions on whether/when to raise interest rates?  gjr]

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  • National Dumbth Polarizes Us

    George Rebane

    [This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 16 September 2015.]

    Those who pay attention know that today we are a divided and divisive nation.  And we can’t blame it all on the usual partisanship that makes its appearance during election seasons, which always serve to pour salt into already open wounds.  Over the last week I was struck by California’s standardized test scores, and the efforts parents have to mount to get their children an education from our public schools.

    ConfusedThe results are in from elementary, middle, and high school grade levels, telling parents and teachers how well the kids learned in the new Common Core curriculum environment.  And the results are not pretty.  Statewide over 55% of our students don’t meet grade level literacy standards, and two out of three don’t meet the math standards.  Worse yet, almost three out of four 11th graders fail to meet the math standards – these are the same young people who want to enter college or the workforce.  Nevada County’s performance pretty much mirrors statewide scores; we are hugging the lowest quartile when compared to other counties.  (more here)

    A more rigorous condemnation of our public schools’ failures is hard to imagine, but the efforts of Mr Alfonso Flores of Anaheim, a parent, teacher, and decorated war veteran, illuminate how firmly are the mechanisms of failure baked into our public schools.  The problem, of course, starts and ends with teachers unions which have fought tooth and nail every effort to improve our kids’ education.  Mr Flores has been a leader in using the state’s ‘parent trigger’ law, passed in 2010, to replace incompetent teachers and school administrators.  The nationally reported experiences he relates about how teachers unions hobble the proper functioning of schools would curl your toes the wrong way.

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  • Sandbox -12sep15

    [I note that in these free forums our liberal friends have problems discussing issues that involve things other than ad hominems. 

    ColonizationOfEurope

    The above little cartoon from a correspondent reprieses a years-long tenet of RR regarding Islam.  Our liberal readers continue to believe that this all originated and resides in the fevered minds of the county’s knuckle-dragging Right. gjr]

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  • The Left’s Climate Scientists on Parade (updated 11sep15)

    George Rebane

    It is clear the Left’s “climate scientists” can be anyone with the politically correct attitude toward AGW.  It is a different matter for the AGW skeptics, their bona fides must include a degree in climatology for openers, else they are dismissed as not qualified to speak on the issue of anthropogenic global warming.  This aspect of the global warming debate comes into focus this Saturday at the GV Peace Lutheran Church as reported by The Union and the Auburn Journal.  There the leftwing League of Women Voters will assemble a couple of worthies to discuss, “How can the actions of our leaders impact our climate?”

    TomSuchanekHeading the marquee is Dr Tom Suchanek (pictured), he has a BS in zoology, MA in ecology and evolution, and a PhD in biology.  He has been on the government tit all his life studying “coastal marine ecology”.   Joining him will be geologist Dr Diz Smith advertised as a “former energy industry leader”.  (H/T to Russ Steele for digging out Dr Smith’s bio.)

    It boggles the professional mind that the Left continues to assume the public to be so gruberized as to accept these people as some kind of domain experts in ANY relevant aspect of AGW involving physics, chemistry, data management, estimation theory, stochastics, complex dynamic systems, algorithmics, computational error propagation, finite element modeling, feedback systems design, …, the list goes on.  Such events should clarify the kind of ‘climate scientists’ that the AGW alarmists count in the UN’s IPCC “scientific consensus” that gives rise to ‘the debate is over’ hysteria which demands we immediately start doing very stupid things on a massive scale and worldwide.

    So when it comes right down to it, if you are a skeptic with degrees and decades of professional experience in the climatology related physical sciences, mathematics, computer science, complex dynamics systems, probabilistics and stochastics, large scale computer models, data handling, algorithmics, decision theory, financial engineering, … with the ability to understand the seminal climatology literature, your skeptical assessments re AGW are not accepted.  However, if you’re a biologist or geologist or, God knows, maybe even a labor lawyer or piano tuner with a history of global warming activism, you are automatically qualified to be presented to the public as having sufficient expertise “to discuss (the) several aspects of climate change.”  Such is the state of the national debate, so go figger.

    [11sep15 update]  A reader sent me this graphic from the Heartland Institute.  It correctly summarizes the current global sweep of politically driven ‘science’ and compares it to real science which is forever skeptical and has been vigorously suppressed wherever it dared raise its head.

    ScientificMethods

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  • Ruminations – 9sep15 (updated 13sep15)

    Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.  Oscar Ameringer

    George Rebane

    ‘Black Lives Matter – but Reality, Not So Much’.  National columnist and keen observer of the social scene Jason Riley agrees with RR’s long-held position on the unmitigated crap that the liberals have been handing out to the black community about how valuable such lives are.  A look at the progressive programs over the last 40 years paints another picture.  Only the local loonies are unclear on the concept.

    Our Designated Reader reports that the FUE continues to burnish his journalistic credentials claiming that The Union is biased 3-1 against AGW reporting.  The fact is that, starting with the 29aug15 Newsom column, the newspaper published two additional pro-AGW columns in quick succession – 5sep15 by Barbara Rivenes, 7sep15 by Edlin Patterson.  This left the score 3-1 against the skeptics of which Bob Hren’s 5sep15 piece was the only rebuttal until Russ Steele’s letter and my 8sep15 Other Voices joined Bob’s article.  Now with Todd Juvinall’s letter, the score is 3 pro-AGW columns vs 2 skeptic columns and 2 skeptic letters.  That seems pretty even-handed to me.  But don’t expect any change from the Lamestream Liar.

    A sandbox commenter posts some words attributed to reader Mr Steven Frisch that so clearly illustrate the Left’s use of the Saul Alinsky paradigm – accuse the other of exactly what you are doing.  In the skeptics’ blogs (including RR) the ‘science’ behind the AGW hysteria is dissected and countered in detail.   And on the True Believer blogs all you find are ad hominems against those who present evidence of fraud and error in the disseminated and swallowed consensus science.  So what’s a Leftie to do in such a case?  Why, just accuse them of what you do.

    The Cato Institute just published a massive comparative study of the EU’s welfare systems.  No country advertises that its welfare and entitlement programs range between the dysfunctional and the unsustainable (America’s leftwing lemmings lap up these lies by omission while continuing to worship at the altar of European socialism.)  The bottom line is still that, led by Denmark, all the EU welfare programs make weaning recipients next to impossible by the implicit marginal tax rates they impose on people exiting the program for a job.  And today all EU member states are scrambling to find ways to cut back their entitlement and welfare disbursements without bloodletting in the streets by Europeans who have grown quite comfortable with the status quo.  Cato compares their folly to ours, and it ain’t pretty.  You should at least read the Exec Summary of ‘The Work Versus Welfare Trade-off: Europe’.

    The EUs Muslim migrant onslaught continues unexamined.  We’ve recently discussed its other details under my recent KVMR commentary, ‘The Great Cultural Divides of 2016’, but here is an additional thought that occurred to me.  It is remarkable how rapidly the globalists can embed the 'right to ubiquitous movement and residence' into a population that has for its entire existence lived under strict authoritarian rule where no such rights previously existed.  We see videos of Syrians, who have passed through lands where their life and limb are not threatened, demand to continue their progress toward more safe and salubrious destinations, there to start new lives.  They give no thought to the rights of the people through whose countries they tramp, or in whose lands they will plant their divergent and dysfunctional cultures.  And the west’s governments (including ours) are so riddled with globalists that there is no chance that the question of such assumed rights will be raised.  If someone from a failed state declares himself a refugee, then today he has an automatic worldwide right to your work and wallet.  And our addled leaderships continue to be surprised by reports that such insane welcoming policies and de facto recognition of migrants' right to transnational migration are motivating additional hundreds of thousands to begin their journeys northward.  When did territorial sanity and sovereignty die?

    [11sep15 update]  I just put down the phone with Supervisor Nate Beason.  Now that Ms Heidi Hall has announced her candidacy for District #1 supervisor, I wanted to reinforce my previously stated intention to support Nate were he to run again.  On this call I urged him to go for his fourth term, and told him that Jo Ann and I are in his corner should he decide to run.  In talking to many people of my persuasion, I have not run into anyone who would not support Nate Beason in a race against our new socialist-in-waiting Ms Hall.  The last thing we need in these foothills is another leftwing lackey to launch their political career promoting Sacramento's internationally recognized insanity in Nevada County.  Nate said that the Beasons will announce their decision in the next week or so, and the phone call left me hopeful.

    [13sep15 update]  Ferguson was a total lie from beginning to end – "Hands up, don't shoot!" was bullshit, and the 'protesters' were thugs hired and imported.  They were hired by MORE, the successor outfit to Missouri's ACORN, now bankrupt.  But then MORE stiffed the 'protesters' who are picketing to get their checks.  Another hard left organization MAU is urging MORE to pay up since the thugs did what they were contracted to do.  The full story is reported by NEWSMAX here.  At every turn the Left lets us know that they are not only stupid, but also just plain evil.  (H/T to reader)

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  • Sandbox – 5sep15

    [There is load of bad news coming down the pike on Obamacare in 2016.  Most widely read people know the travesty that new entitlement has been, and the worst is yet to come.  Our progressive readers have excused their happy dancing in the streets about Obamacare while citing how bad our healthcare system is in the eyes of the WHO.  The siren song for all socialists is the vaunted 'nationalized single payer healthcare system' of which all the fine exemplars are said to be doing just fine in the EU.  However, that is not the case, and already in 2008 Cato published their compendium of these single payer systems in Policy Analysis #613.  And since then things have gotten considerably worse in the lands of 'free health care'.  Worth a look before we order the confetti for the next Obamacare celebration.  gjr]

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  • Man did it, and is still doing it! (updated 8sep15)

    George Rebane

    Our government-media complex is ratcheting up the hysteria about man-made global warming (AGW) to a fever pitch in preparation for this fall’s Paris conference on ‘climate change’.  Obama wants the world to see that the US will lead in reducing CO2 emissions no matter the economic cost, and Moonbeam Brown wants the world to also see that California will be way ahead of Obama.  The entire argument for massive increases in the scope, size, and cost of government called for in Agenda21 rests on the thesis – Man’s burning of fossil fuels is warming the global climate to life threatening levels in the near future, and forcing Man to greatly reduce or abandon fossil fuels will save us from the coming worldwide disaster.

    Local liberal cadres have been cranked up to support the hysteria on a grass roots level.  Here in Nevada County our newspaper The Union is picking up the pace in its op-ed pages.  On 30 August the paper published an article by two physicians (the Drs Newsom of the Nevada County Climate Change Coalition) touting pro-AGW consensus science and denigrating its skeptics (or their term ‘deniers’) focusing on Congressman LaMalfa.  A few of us leaped into the breach to answer the Newsoms’ erroneous reporting.  I wrote a short letter addressing their errors, but my friend Dr Bob Hren wrote a longer and better piece which was published today (5sep15) in the Union’s op-ed section – ‘Climate change: some inconvenient truths’.  In his article Bob summarizes a few of the more egregious errors of data, fact and science purveyed by True Believers like the Newsoms.

    A more comprehensive response to the AGW propaganda promoted by the Environmental Defense Fund was recently published in Forbes – ‘Top 10 Global Warming Lies That May Shock You’.  The heavily referenced piece was crafted by the skeptical Heartland Institute.

    CApower2015
    Meanwhile, Gov Brown and the California Democrats are doing their best to pass new legislation that will significantly take the state’s economy down another notch or two, driving out more employers and jobs.  As reported here in the 5sep15 WSJ, the “proposed state law would cut petroleum-fuel use by 50%, require utilities to get half their power from renewable sources, and increase energy efficiency in buildings by 50%—all by 2030, using 2016 levels as the starting point. A second measure would mandate an 80% reduction in state greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050, from 1990 levels. … The bills are backed by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, who say that California must begin taking serious steps to curb its use of fossil fuels.”  See the above graphic from the article.  What the True Believers never tell us is from where does the electric power come that will replace fossil fuels’ use in transportation.  It most certainly will not come from wind and solar which are ‘some time’ sources produced by technologies not nearly sufficient to deliver the levels of steady power consumption required by even our growth-stunted future economy.

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  • The Great Cultural Divides of 2016 (updated 7sep15)

    'What happens in the Middle East doesn’t stay in the Middle East.'  WSJ

    George Rebane

    [This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary aired on 2 September 2015.]

    Here’s a 50,000 foot view of the great cultural divides that will focus our attention in America and also in the European Union.  The EU’s promise of a unified Europe free of wars is under great strain both economically and culturally.  It turns out that Angela Merkel’s conclusion that “Multi-kulti does not work” is true, not only in Germany, but all over the continent.  And nothing has caused the Europeans to raise their ire more than the increasing flood of Muslims into their cities and countries.

    The diaspora from the failed Islamic states that ring Europe on its south is turning into a life altering invasion of people who share few values with the Europeans beyond the desire to escape death and destruction.  These illegal aliens who are daily scampering onto the shores of southern Europe are called ‘migrants’ which is their word for our politically correct ‘undocumented immigrants’.  The European countries of entry don’t want the Muslims to stay, so the ‘immigrant’ word is out.  But they do want them to migrate north to the richer regions of the continent, so ‘migrant’ is an accepted politically neutral label for the desperate aliens who are quickly ushered northward by countries like Greece, Italy, and Spain.

    Muslims have been emigrating to Europe for decades, and have made themselves conspicuous to the indigenous Europeans by their refusal to assimilate and their understandable desire to live in their own culturally cohesive communities.  In many countries these enclaves are now functionally sovereign in that they follow their own laws, maintain their own traditions, and forcefully reject any encroachment by the institutions of their targeted host nations.

    We in America were once taught to abide all cultures which in our public forums subsumed themselves into the overarching ‘American culture’ – practice your own cultures when you are among yourselves, but become an obvious American when you gather in the town square with fellow Americans.  This is no longer taught to our young.  Today our schools celebrate America’s constituent cultures to the point where a common American culture has been banished and replaced by reference to a yet nebulous global culture.

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  • Another Collectivist Cancer (updated 2sep15)

    George Rebane

    A correspondent sent me this clipping that recently appeared in the Miller County Liberal of Colquitt, Georgia.  It is another example of progressivism run amok in America that affects much more than our national debt.  Such people are the stalwarts and core constituents of liberal politicians across our land.  Hard to garner their vote if your message is that you should become a legitimate couple and earn your own way instead of taking it from your neighbors.

    CollectivistCancer

    [2sep15 update]  Yet one more collectivist cancer is now rampant in the land.  The clearly fraudulent ‘Black Lives Matter’ agitation (movement?) abetted by the lamestream, has now cost hundreds of additional lives across the country this year as crime rates have soared.  Why?  Because crime has now been elevated by the administration and various leftwing municipal jurisdictions to have become politically motivated, thereby giving lawlessness an implicit level of justification that invite more scumbags – especially the black-on-black kind – to wantonly kill.

    Our police across the land are justifiably convinced that civilized society, led by progressive politicians, no longer has their backs.  They have quietly started pulling back from their normal law enforcement practices as they are being regularly hauled into vindictive politically motivated judicial proceedings, or simply murdered in the streets.  To put meat on these observations, just consider a sampling of American cities in which the murder rate has sky-rocketed during the last year – Austin +90.9%, Denver +75%, Milwaukee +73.6%, St Louis +57.7%, Baltimore +55.8%.

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