Category: Political Correctness

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I am a liberal, and therefore am a conservative

 

I am linking you to a long and heartfelt article by a former American Democrat who, over the course of 25 years, has become inclined to vote Republican without any change in his political views. How can this be?

I think many people who once voted liberal or for left-wing candidates have experienced the same emotions and the same evolution. They may smoke dope; they may support abortion rights, limited or not; they may even sort their garbage and take global warming seriously, but they have one thing in common with me, George Orwell, and you, dear reader. They can smell the totalitarianism emanating from the political left these days, the “smelly little orthodoxies” as Orwell called them.

In the 1930s these virulent intolerances and dreams of social control were in some fashion channelled by the Communist Party and its near equivalents. After the fall of Soviet Communism, we found that the same human impulses to control and domination were liberated from the discipline, such as it was, of Marxist thought. Thus without the discipline of Marxism and the Party, leftist totalitarian behaviour and thought spread out of its Petri dish to infect wider and wider sectors of society. The impulse to grievance and victimhood remains, even as the theory that gave it a semblance of coherence lies rotting in its grave. Which only demonstrates the truth that Leftism is an urge of the soul and ontologically prior to Marxism, which was a particular economic theory seeking to justify the Leftism.

I quote from Brad Torgerson’s article (the one I recommend you read):

 

A good friend of mine, who also happens to be an outstanding author, once quipped, “If I am forced to choose a side, I choose the side which is not forcing me to choose sides.”

Seldom have I ever encountered phrasing more apt. Because that’s precisely how I feel. I’ve been feeling that way, for years now. It was not a sudden thing. It was a gradual realization. The slow clarity of an underlying sentiment, incrementally surfacing…..

And later in his essay –

And I have been reminded every single day, just how far I’ve been pushed away — by so-called progressives in this country.

Sure, some of that is me walking my talk. I am not exactly the same guy I was 25 years ago. And not because I don’t think some of the idealism of liberal thought is not worthy, or even evocatively beautiful.

It is.

Liberalism — the kind I was attracted to in my teens, and early twenties — mostly focuses on brighter futures with better choices.

Yet at many points over the past quarter century, that shining picture of what the Left supposedly stands for, has been undermined again, and again, and again, and again, by the behavior of self-styled Leftists.

Maybe it all comes down to the fact that I decided Alinsky’s ballyhooed rules are pernicious. Not once do they involve self-reflection, nor questions of higher moral obligation to a power or a need beyond simple political expediency. Like with the 2004 Washington State governors race, the ends justify the means. If you’re a Leftist and you have to lie to get what you want, then lie. If you’re a Leftist and you have to cheat to get what you want, then cheat. If you’re a Leftist and you have to hurt people to get what you want, or if you have to frighten people into not opposing you, then hurt and frighten people.

Never doubt that everything you — the Leftist — says or does, is done justifiably.

Everyone and everything is a fair target. Lash out. Incriminate. Slander. Punish. Make them quake in their boots. They deserve it, the jerks. “If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists!” Oops, Leftists excoriated Bush 43 for saying that. Now they themselves live it every day. “If you didn’t vote for Hillary, you’re with the KKK and the Nazis!”

Torgerson’s article speaks for itself. He joins a long list of people disillusioned with Leftist totalitarianism: if you are interested in the 1930s version I recommend “The God that Failed”, written by several important former European communists, and if the 1960s is your thing, you can try David Horowitz’ “Radical Son”.

I would say that, now, more than ever, we need an Orwell,  to remind us once again that patriotism and loyalty to one’s own people trumps (yes, that word) abstract professions of loyalty to the future, the road to which is made of human skulls.

 

Today’s Tedious Wanker: Michael Mann, “climate scientist”, apostle of global warming fanaticism

 

 

In today’s The Hill, a newspaper directed at the Washington political class, Michael Mann, of hockey-stick fame, writes:

“The era of climate change denial is over. Rejection of the unequivocal scientific evidence that carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are warming the planet and changing our climate is no longer socially acceptable,” Professor Mann said.

“Only the most fringe of politicians now disputes the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and human-caused, and they are largely ignored.”

Not merely wrong but socially unacceptable!

When will the denial of Trump’s election be over, and be no longer socially acceptable?

When will these people admit they were beaten? When will they start to learn? Probably never.

But back to Michael Mann

“We scientists are, in general, a reticent lot who would much rather spend our time in the lab, out in the field, teaching and doing research. It is only the most unusual of circumstances that gets us marching in the streets. Trump’s assault on science is just such a circumstance. And we are seeing a rebellion continue to mount.”

Michael Mann has for decades been conducting a political campaign through assertions of climate science, the  effects of which  involve economic distress to tens of millions if not billions of people, by raising energy prices, putting us off fossil fuels,  wasting wealth on inefficient wind turbines, all on the basis of a dubious assertion that human activities are the principal cause of global warming. The Ontario government’s windmill and coal policies are direct results of the political climate of ideas created by the likes of Professor Mann.

A reticent lot, indeed. More likely, accustomed to wielding power over the fate of humanity, and now angry that the sceptre of power has been abruptly ripped from their hands by Trump and his appointees.

 

 

 

 

 

The fall of the Dark Tower, the Barad Dur, or the Impending Collapse of the Global Warming Hysteria:

 

 

The most significant and predictable impact of the Trump Presidency will be the collapse of the global warming hysteria that has gripped policy makers for the last ten years, or longer.

To repeat, the world’s climate is constantly changing. The issue is whether the effect of all the CO2 we are putting into the air is causing some or all of the observed, and rather small, amount of global warming.

Three facts are observed.

  • Atmospheric CO2 is climbing past 400 parts per million, and it is not conceivable that the increase of CO2 has some other origin than human.
  • Atmospheric temperatures show significantly less increase than the computers models of the IPCC have predicted. [This alone ought to be enough to dismiss the alarm, if AGW were a scientific proposition.]
  • Politicians and civil servants have created and sustained the global warming hysteria, for various reasons: increased tax revenues, the appearance of doing something about a world-threatening problem, and the greater control over the economy which  anthropogenic global warming (AGW) justifies.

In an excellent essay in The Manhattan Contrarian, the author points to Trumps cabinet appointments in energy and the environment, and draws the following conclusions.

Now the backers of the global warming alarm will not only be called upon to debate, but will face the likelihood of being called before a highly skeptical if not hostile EPA to answer all of the hard questions that they have avoided answering for the last eight years.  Questions like:  Why are recorded temperatures, particularly from satellites and weather balloons, so much lower than the alarmist models had predicted?  How do you explain an almost-20-year “pause” in increasing temperatures even as CO2 emissions have accelerated?  What are the details of the adjustments to the surface temperature record that have somehow reduced recorded temperatures from the 1930s and 40s, and thereby enabled continued claims of “warmest year ever” when raw temperature data show warmer years 70 and 80 years ago?  Suddenly, the usual hand-waving (“the science is settled”) is not going to be good enough any more.  What now?

As the Contrarian writes, of the $28 billion the US Department of Energy spends annually, roughly half of it went to global warming research and energy investment predicated on the replacement of fossil fuels. These projects will all disappear once the spigot of government funding is turned off. The AGW fanatics will have to find useful jobs, and the corrupted scientists can go back to measuring things without recourse to false doctrines.

Like Sauron’s tower, the Barad-Dür,  AGW will collapse when the Ring of Green Power is melted, and Trump is about to toss the Ring of Green Power into the cleansing fire of rational skepticism. What an unlikely Frodo! What an inconceivable Gollum!

 

 

 

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Identity politics: The polite and the rude versions

Very strong Image Of a afro American woman Crying isolated on B

 

 

 

Since the Trump victory a number of articles have been published decrying the left’s reliance on “identity politics” as a causative factor in the election. One of the politer versions is Matt Ridley’s in his blog here.  Jim Goad published the ruder version of this repudiation in TakiMag. Even the New York Times emerged from its doctrinal slumbers after the election and allowed the publication of Mark Lilla’s “The End of Identity Liberalism”.

Says Lilla:

“But the fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life.”

and later:

But it is at the level of electoral politics that identity liberalism has failed most spectacularly, as we have just seen. National politics in healthy periods is not about “difference,” it is about commonality. And it will be dominated by whoever best captures Americans’ imaginations about our shared destiny. Ronald Reagan did that very skillfully, whatever one may think of his vision. So did Bill Clinton, who took a page from Reagan’s playbook. He seized the Democratic Party away from its identity-conscious wing, concentrated his energies on domestic programs that would benefit everyone (like national health insurance) and defined America’s role in the post-1989 world.

Unfortunately for the health of the polity, I see no end to the catering to identity politics. It has taken a blow to the head, but it retains its strength as an ideology. Why? Because blaming white people, males and Christians is the core of Leftist thought at this stage. Capitalism? an evil system devised by dead white males on the backs of slaves to erect an economy poisoning the earth with carbon dioxide. Racism? can only be exercised by white people, by definition, because only white people have hegemony. And so in self-referencing circular closed reasoning.

In the ruder version of Jim Goad, it goes like this:

“Listen up, dimwits: When you encourage racial pride in all groups except whites, you aren’t exactly making a case against “racism.” If you have even a semblance of a spine, sooner or later you’ll hear this nonstop sneering condescension about how you were born with a stain on your soul and say, “Hey, fuck you. I’ve done nothing wrong, but you’re really starting to bother me…”

Instead, a large swath of voters grew so tired of being actively hated, they struck back and said “enough.” They didn’t “vote against their interests,” as is so often patronizingly alleged; they voted against the condescending, scolding, sheltered creampuffs who try to dictate their interests to them.

I am not asserting that Trump won exclusively or even predominantly because white people got pissed off at the racial profiling of the Left, but it had to be a significant factor in the repudiation of their views which have accompanied the repudiation of Clinton.

I will go further, and venture onto ground which is sure to be attacked and supported for the wrong reasons. I read many news aggregators. One of them is American Renaissance, which goes well beyond Trump’s American nationalism to a confidently expressed white racial consciousness. By this I mean that it is based on a number of premises:
  • white people exist, and though a loose category, a fuzzy set, they have characteristics
  • they have made a disproportionate contribution, relative to their global numbers,  to the evolution of science, arts and politics for the past  millennium, maybe longer.
  • It may be the result of cultural, religious, or biological reasons, in any combination.
  • This heritage has been broadly beneficial to mankind

Now it should be stated that I have no idea whether there is a biological underpinning to this relative but not exclusive excellence, or not. I think the contribution of Christianity to this state of affairs is at present underrated, but biology may be a factor. I do not know.

I do not think that the relative accomplishments of white civilizations are the moral basis of superior rights for white people, whoever they may be. That way lies stagnation, slavery and its religious-political expression, Islam.

 My point is that such discussion is banned. The result is that many disadvantages of other peoples are treated as issues of wrongful discrimination rather than the obvious fact that some people are a few bricks short of a load. This could be permanent, or, as I believe, a result of the current stage of their cultural evolution.
 A racial viewpoint – whether cultural, biological or both – is inadequate to explain everything and perhaps even most things, but the total exclusion of this point of view from public and private  discourse is, and will be seen to be, insane. Like pretending the sexes are the same in every respect.
Now, back to the issue of what we have in common, which is where a sane politics must start from. Here is President-elect Trump talking about commonalities rather than diversities at his post victory rally in Cincinnati. [Skip the warm-up acts]. He gets the vital need to bring people together, as has every successful democrat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcKeilna2aM

“I am only the messenger”, he says at one point, and then in a moment of pure Donald, says: “but a pretty great messenger”.

Something’s happening here, and you don’t know what it is, do you? Mr. Jones

The issue many people are wondering about is this: how big is the change that is going on? Is it merely – and I use that word ironically – the election of Trump, the vote for Brexit, and associated political changes that will likely follow in Europe? Or is it bigger? And if bigger, of what does it consist?

Caol Islay held forth at lunch yesterday that what we were witnessing was akin to the would-be revolutions of 1968, which did not succeed, but which marked the breakup of the consensus of post-World War 2 societies. Are we witnessing the beginnings of a vast mood change? And what would  happen if we were having one?

Take Obama’s recent meditations with David Remnick of the New Yorker, as  quoted in Breitbart:

What frustrated Obama and his staff [in the 2016 campaign] was the knowledge that, in large measure, they were reaching their own people but no further. They spoke to the networks and the major cable outlets, the major papers and the mainstream Web sites, and, in an attempt to find people “where they are,” forums such as Bill Maher’s and Samantha Bee’s late-night cable shows, and Marc Maron’s podcast. But they would never reach the collective readerships of Breitbart News, the Drudge Report, WND, Newsmax, InfoWars, and lesser-knowns like Western Journalism—not to mention the closed loop of peer-to-peer right-wing rumor-mongering.

… That marked a decisive change from previous political eras, [Obama] maintained. “Ideally, in a democracy, everybody would agree that , because that’s what ninety-nine per cent of scientists tell us,” he said. “And then we would have a debate about how to fix it. That’s how, in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, you had Republicans supporting the Clean Air Act and you had a market-based fix for acid rain rather than a command-and-control approach. So you’d argue about means, but there was a baseline of facts that we could all work off of. And now we just don’t have that” …

“I have complete confidence in the American people—that if I can have a conversation with them they’ll choose what’s right. At an emotional level, they want to do the right thing if they have the information.” And yet in an age of filter bubbles and social-media silos, he knew, the “information” that reached people was increasingly shaped by what they wanted to be true. And that was no longer in his hands or anyone else’s.

  1.  The liberal media could not reach those who were not already persuaded.
  2. Obama remains convinced that “climate change is the consequence of man-made behavior.” No discussion no debate, it is a fact.
  3. If he could only speak to the American people they would see the wisdom of his positions: “if I can have a conversation with them they’ll choose what’s right”.

Let us start with that hideous word “conversation”. It is not a conversation with one person holding the megaphone and when the listener is hounded, defunded, reviled and attacked for disagreeing – see global warming as the archetypal liberal “conversation”.

Hence it is only to be expected that, when the issue is a matter of fact, and one side holds it out to be a question of religious belief, there can be no error, there can only be heresy.

The Left has been treating dissent as heresy for decades. The number of undiscussable items is only added to with every passing  year. You name it: ecology, crime, race, IQ differentials, heritability of traits, and the adequacy of Darwin to explain everything, the nature of Islam, the benefits of multiculturalism. You could think of four or five additional major areas of life where the Left treats disagreement about facts as worthy of social shunning and job loss. Of being labeled a racist, exist, fascist, homophobe etc.

They have been shouting through megaphones for decades, and the noise level only got more intense under Obama. But Trump elicited yet further disparagement from the bien-pensants. The surprize for me was the extent to which apparently well educated people, not usually associated with politically correct persecutions,  have completely lost their minds about both Trump, his supporters, and nationalist economics.

To the constantly growing chorus of PC was added the upper-middle class howls about free trade. Personally I support free trade. I think it makes us richer, but while it makes us some of us richer it clearly has negative effects on our domestic working class. It was perfectly within Trump’s right to speak for the displaced and the disadvantaged in this titanic economic transformation. There was an element in the financial press that continues to shriek “How dare he?!” “Who are these peasants and how dare they revolt?”

So in answer to my question, I see that something is going on larger than the immediate policy changes consequent to nationalist electoral victories. I see a vast mood change. Once you lift the lid of political correctness in one place, it will be lifted everywhere. That is my belief. We can only hope.

 

Yes, Rebel Yell, Trump is the President-elect!

 

trump-with-obama

 

Rebel Yell and I repaired to the Fortress of Solitude yesterday, ostensibly to split some firewood. The evening’s discussion turned to the significance of Trump’s election. These were our thoughts.

  • All media were wrong, massively, and in two ways, as predictors, and as participants in what became the electorate’s massive repudiation of the Democratic candidate.
  • Trump is a temporary window  that allows for push-back against the rising tide of cultural bolshevism and related evils.
  • Clinton promised the continuation and intensification of every current negative tendency: anti-white racialism, gender confusion, global warming catastrophism, war mongering against Russia, pandering to Islam, and so forth.

Changes to be expected include:

Attitudes

  1. A decline in the influence of political correctness, when American society’s leader has so radically broken with it.
  2. A toughening of attitudes towards Islam. (It was related to me this week by a Pakistani Muslim of sound judgment that all of political Pakistan was aware that Hillary diverted her plane during a trip to India in order to lecture the Pakistani military leader on his treatment of an ousted Pakistani civilian prime minister, after a donation on the latter’s behalf had been made to the Clinton Foundation. People from more corrupt cultures are quicker to understand the deep corruption of the Clintons. They have seen how it works for ever. We are just learning the art of bought politicians.)
  3. A toughening of attitudes all around, towards whingers, social justice warriors, and the undeserving, and increased social authorization to speak out against evil.
  4. The consistent media-transmitted disrespect for ordinary people’s concerns, particularly white people’s concerns, will be diminish.

Climate catastrophism

  1. Anthropocentric global warming as a basis of energy policy is toast. Trump correctly sees it as the pretense for a massive takeover of every portion of the economy by organs of state planning, and nothing more. Windmills,  carbon capture, “green” energy, and measures against using fossil fuels will suffer the lingering death they deserve. The parasites who have benefited by income transfers from users  to the producers of subsidized of energy will, alas, not be executed.

Market ideology

  1. There will be a more realistic attitude towards the benefits of markets, and their negative consequences. The idolatry of markets has been repudiated,
  2. It will be realized that, for there to be conservatism, there must be conservatives living to experience it. Thus immigration policy in the United States will be toughened, and its borders defended.

Foreign Policy

  1. The agitation for war against Russia will cease. US involvement in Syria will be coordinated in some measure with Russia’s.
  2. Turkey may become the target of animosity.
  3. Iran will be punched out if it steps out of line.
  4. The US will cease to be anti-British and anti-Brexit.

Health Care

  1. Obamacare will be overturned and a better (somewhat socialized) medical scheme will be installed in its stead. The American insurance market for health is not organized nationally, but on the basis of fifty state-sized mini and micro-markets. Trump may use his majority to assert national jurisdiction over health insurance, and get the necessary economies of scale and levels of competition into health insurance delivery. (The effects of health insurance price rises on the voters has yet to be sufficiently appreciated).

Policing and American blacks

  1. The Ferguson effect will be dissolved. Police will be encouraged once again to enforce the law on black criminality. Trump will not find pseudo-kinship with violent blacks who have been shot by police or citizens. It will be possible to state in public that vastly more American blacks are shot by their fellow blacks than by police, and not be fired for it.

At the end of our discussion, Rebel Yell banged the table, and asked: “Tell me, is Trump, President-elect?” Yes, Rebel Yell, he is.

_______________________

Then came news of the death of Leonard Cohen. We put on his CD “Live in London” and listened to the perfection, and thought about mortality and Cohen’s greatness.

Matt Ridley on global greening

 

desertsgreen

Matt Ridley’s address to the Global Warming Policy Foundation must be read by people concerned to find a sane view of global warming, climate change, and what the arguments are.

We’re told that it’s impertinent to question “the science” and that we must think as we are told. But arguments from authority are the refuge of priests.

Thomas Henry Huxley put it this way: “The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”

What keeps science honest, what stops it from succumbing entirely to confirmation bias, is that it is decentralized, allowing one lab to challenge another.

That’s how truth is arrived at in science, not by scientists challenging their own theories (that’s a myth), but by scientists disputing each other’s theories.

These days there is a legion of well paid climate spin doctors. Their job is to keep the debate binary: either you believe climate change is real and dangerous or you’re a denier who thinks it’s a hoax.

But there’s a third possibility they refuse to acknowledge: that it’s real but not dangerous. That’s what I mean by lukewarming, and I think it is by far the most likely prognosis.

I am not claiming that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas; it is.

I am not saying that its concentration in the atmosphere is not increasing; it is.

I am not saying the main cause of that increase is not the burning of fossil fuels; it is.

I am not saying the climate does not change; it does.

I am not saying that the atmosphere is not warmer today than it was 50 or 100 years ago; it is.

And I am not saying that carbon dioxide emissions are not likely to have caused some (probably more than half) of the warming since 1950.

I agree with the consensus on all these points.

I am not in any sense a “denier”, that unpleasant, modern term of abuse for blasphemers against the climate dogma, though the Guardian and New Scientist never let the facts get in the way of their prejudices on such matters. I am a lukewarmer.

Read the whole speech here.

I am a Deplorable

deplorables

 

 

The British Army of 1914 was called “a contemptible little army” by the German Kaiser, and so they called themselves “the Old Contemptibles”. “Quaker”, “Protestant”, and “hippie” were all originally terms of derision that stuck, and were neutralized with the passage of time. I think Trump supporters should embrace being called “deplorable” especially when you see what the liberal media call deplorable.

  • 79% of Clinton supporters thought treatment of racial minorities in the US was a “very important” issue. Only 42% of Trump supporters felt that way.
  • 47% of US voters appear to think the Donald is a racist. 42% do not. (nothing about the Deplorables’ values here)
  • 60% of US voters believe the Donald is biased against women and minorities. (ditto)
  • Are you bothered when you come into contact with immigrants who speak little or no English? 50% of Americans in general are bothered. 77% of Trump supporters are.
  • Is Islam at odds with American values? All American voters: 57% Deplorable Trumpians: 83%

So, as to the values held by Trumpians, they significantly are less concerned with American racial (read black grievance) obsessions, and are somewhat more concerned with Islamic aggression against the values of a liberal society than the already intolerant 57%. And I would  certainly be bothered when I come across an immigrant who speaks neither English nor French, but I never come across them, so sheltered am I.

So I am definitely a Deplorable. You probably are too, with your two university degrees if you are reading this website. Imagine what all those coal-mining hillbillies feel like. Deplorable, indeed.

This is your mind on “diversity”

The picture is of the editorial board of the Huffington Post, the leftwing website aggregator. It was posted in all unconsciousness by its Executive Editor as an example of “diversity”.

huffingtonpostdiversity

It is unclear whether, when Liz Heron posted this photograph on Twitter, that she was even aware that it showed an all female board with two or three Asians among the whites. No blacks, of course, and no men, of course. If I am right, Heron invoked the term “diverse” the way a Spaniard in the 16th century would have invoked the Virgin Mary or the Holy Spirit, where rote mental formulas have supplanted thought, or self-awareness. Irony has been abolished, because irony requires an understanding that there is a gap between reality and our aspirations.

Hence, my interpretation of of the totalitarian slogans of our time:

Diversity = uniformity

Inclusion = exclusion

Multicultural – monocultural

It is the purest Bolshevism.

We are in a totalitarian age, and it did not stop with the destruction of fascism and the repudiation of soviet communism. No sir. It has transmuted into political correctness, which is anti-male, anti-white, and anti-Christian, among other things. Its real nature is explored in this article by Frank Ellis from 1999 found at American Renaissance. I recommend that you read it because it captures the essence of the cultural transformation which is being tried out in North America, and which, in my mind, goes from strength to strength.

What we call “political correctness” actually dates back to the Soviet Union of the 1920s (politicheskaya pravil’nost’ in Russian), and was the extension of political control to education, psychiatry, ethics, and behavior. It was an essential component of the attempt to make sure all aspects of life were consistent with ideological orthodoxy — which is the distinctive feature of all totalitarianisms. In the post-Stalin period, political correctness even meant that dissent was seen as a symptom of mental illness, for which the only treatment was incarceration….

Today, of course, we are made to believe that diversity is strength, perversity is virtue, success is oppression, and that relentlessly repeating these ideas over and over is “tolerance and diversity.”

This, of course, is the beauty of “racism” and “sexism” for today’s culture attackers — sin can be extended far beyond individuals to include institutions, literature, language, history, laws, customs, entire civilizations. The charge of “institutional racism” is no different from declaring an entire economic class an enemy of the people. “Racism” and “sexism” are multiculturalism’s assault weapons, its Big Ideas, just as class warfare was for Communists, and the effects are the same. If a crime can be collectivized all can be guilty because they belong to the wrong group. When young whites are victims of racial preferences they are to-day’s version of the Russian peasants. Even if they themselves have never oppressed anyone they “belong to the race that is guilty of everything.”

The purpose of these multi-cultural campaigns is to destroy the self. The mouth moves, the right gestures follow, but they are the mouth and gestures of a zombie, the new Soviet man or, today, PC-man. And once enough people have been conditioned this way, violence is no longer necessary. We reach steady-state totalitarianism, in which the vast majority know what is expected of them and play their allotted roles.

The longer I watch this phenomenon in action, the more I am persuaded, nay, convinced, that such apparently extreme descriptions of political correctness are exact, precise, correct, and right. It makes me want Trump to win, just to break through the carapace of political correctness.

“Communism would not last a minute if we just spoke the truth,” said Solzhenitsyn. I am appalled that what he said about Communism has become applicable to our own society, and it needed neither war nor revolution in the conventional sense to impose this totalitarianism on us.

 

 

 

Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, on why there is no CO2 crisis

Greenpeace co-founder pens treatise on the positive effects of CO2 – says there is no crisis

This is a straight lift from Watts Up with That

Moore looks at the historical record of CO2 in our atmosphere and concludes that we came dangerously close to losing plant life on Earth about 18,000 years ago, when CO2 levels approached 150 ppm, below which plant life can’t sustain photosynthesis. He notes:

“A 140 million year decline in CO2 to levels that came close to threatening the survival of life on Earth can hardly be described as “the balance of nature”.

Now, with 400ppm in the atmosphere, the biosphere is once again booming (see figure 8 below). He also points out how environmental groups and politicians are using the “crisis” of CO2 increase to feather their own nests:

“A powerful convergence of interests among key elites supports and drives the climate catastrophe narrative. Environmentalists spread fear and raise donations; politicians appear to be saving the Earth from doom; the media has a field day with sensation and conflict; scientists and science institutions raise billions in public grants, create whole new institutions, and engage in a feeding frenzy of scary scenarios; businesses want to look green and receive huge public subsidies for projects that would otherwise be economic losers, such as large wind farms and solar arrays. Even the Pope of the Catholic Church has weighed in with a religious angle. Lost in all these machinations is the indisputable fact that the most important thing about CO2 is that it is essential for all life on Earth and that before humans began to burn fossil fuels, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was heading in a very dangerous direction for a very long time. Surely, the most “dangerous” change in climate in the short term would be to one that would not support sufficient food production to feed our own population.”

The link to the full (24 pp) report is below.

https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/moore-positive-impact-of-human-co2-emissions.pdf

 

lauterbrunnen

The picture of the Lauterbrunnen (loudstream) valley in Switzerland is pretty and relevant. Do you see the shape of that valley? It is in the shape of a steep “U”, characteristic of the erosion pattern formed by ice. Within near-historical time, some 9 to 12,000 years ago, that valley was filled with ice, all the way to the top of the steep walls. Solid, grinding, flowing ice, at a latitude of Canada’s capital, Ottawa, 46 degrees north. There has been global warming.