Read it.

Makes you wonder what they know that you do not.

Read it.

If you have a number of children, as I do, you might be familiar with something like the following scene: A child is caught red-handed doing something he shouldn’t, say, stealing a cookie from the cookie jar. When confronted, he immediately begins to deny guilt and deflect blame.

“My sister ate the cookie! I was just reaching my hand in to make sure it was gone so I could tell you,” the child might exclaim, while dusting cookie crumbs off of his shirt. If pressed about his obvious guilt, he might become angry and lash out.

This is just the sort of behavior we are witnessing from the election-rigging Democrats over the past several weeks. They scream “insurrection” and “coup” at 74.2 million Trump supporters who supposedly bear collective guilt for the actions of a few hundred rioting LARPers at the Capitol, who were immediately denounced by virtually everyone on the Right (in sharp contrast to leftist rioters over the summer, who were coddled and encouraged by the Democrats).

Meanwhile, these same election riggers have launched a “domestic terrorism” witch hunt against Trump supporters, in a clear and obvious attempt to suppress political opposition to the new regime.

Like the child with his hand in the cookie jar, the more guilty the Democrats are of “winning” a blatantly rigged election versus Donald Trump, the louder they must scream about their noble crusade to save “democracy” from “fascism.”

As commentator Glenn Greenwald recently told Tucker Carlson, “They’re trying to harness corporate and monopoly power to silence everyone who disagrees with them, the very hallmark, the epitome of the fascism they claim to be fighting, but which in reality they embody.”

Read it.

That rustling sound you hear is a thousand progressive panties forming into a wad.

Gizmodo: US Should Demilitarise and Withdraw to Reduce CO2 Emissions

Could Recent U.S. Warming Trends be Largely Spurious?

Read it.

orecasting when a species might go extinct is hard because whatever is causing a species to die off rarely progresses at the same rate. It can speed up in the blink of an eye in ways that surprise people.

Two researchers wrote a paper a few years ago explaining why.

Say an elephant is being hunted for its tusk. The rate of hunting often massively speeds up over time, cascading into a frenzy that pushes a mildly at-risk species into quick extinction.

Bison in America, 1883.

Ismist: A person who sees the world in terms of ‘-ism’ — e.g. racism, sexism, white supermacism, etc.

Phobiaphobe: A person with an irrational fear of phobias — e.g. transphobia, homophobia, islamophobia, etc.

Steve Sailer.

Assuming that in lieu of your test scores you submit a Jared Kushner-sized donation to the Harvard Development Office. Do you really think that if you don’t submit your test scores that Harvard will automatically assume you would have gotten perfect 800s? Harvard hasn’t been on top of the American college game since 1636 by being stupid.

PBS Goes RADICAL: Amanpour Pushes Climate Alarmism with Michael Mann

Friday Funny: Another last chance to save the world from Climate Change

John Kerry’s Straw Man Arguments For Wasting Money On Climate Change

Mitchell Wails: U.S. Must Restore Climate ‘Credibility’ With Russia & China!

ZMan’s weekly podcast.

Way back in the old days, politicians in trouble with their voters would often be described as “tone deaf” by their less harsh critics. They were in trouble because they no longer had the ability to hear how they sounded to their voters. They would say things that were maybe acceptable behind closed doors in Washington but should never be said in public. Maybe they were prone to saying true things that were best left unsaid or that confirmed things people suspected about the guy.

That is not an expression you hear these days. No one care about how one sounds to the Dirt People, as that no longer matters. What really matters is how you sound to the Cloud People, a lesson Donald Trump learned. The media no longer talks about this either, as they are just as self-absorbed as the rest of them. The result is our politics is now constructed behind soundproof glass. On one side are the politics actors, performing their routines to piped-in cheers from the crowd.

Highly recommended.

Pentagon declares climate change a ‘national security issue’ (The Hill)

“You Can’t Fix Stupid”… Biden Pauses New Oil & Gas Leasing on Federal Lands and Waters

Joy Reid Suggests That Ignoring Climate Change Might Provoke An Alien Attack

The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try

Earth used to be cooler than we thought, which changes our math on global warming

Are EVs Good For The Environment? …Mostly Not

NYT Climate Action Book Review: “How to Blow Up a Pipeline”

Endangered Cloud Forests, Clouds and Climate Change

ZMan draws an analogy.

Anyone who has had a cat knows that the cat takes a certain pleasure in the acquisition of its food. Put food down for the dog and the dog eats the food. Put food down for the cat and it will saunter up to the dish and maybe sample a little, then take a break to watch the dish for a while, before returning for some more food. A bug gets loose in the house and the dog will just eat it, but the cat will torment the thing to death. One animal is all about the process, while the other is about the result.

This difference is something to keep in mind as America descends into the woke totalitarianism of our diversity loving masters. It is assumed that totalitarianism leads to labor camps and people disappearing in the night. Those are the examples we have from our history. The communists liked sending the uncooperative to work camps, while the fascist like shooting the inconvenient. In both cases, the point was to remove the problem and discourage others from being a problem.

Meet The Team Shaking Up Climate Models

The Chart That Explains Larry Fink’s True “Green” Agenda

ZMan continues to deal in inconvenient truths.

The technological revolution was expected to solve lots of problems that plagued the industrial age. Society was supposed to become more democratic, for example, as improvements in communication made it easier for people to express their preferences in the public square. The distribution of goods would become more equitable, as innovation would smash the old bottlenecks. The technological revolution would make the world flatter, more egalitarian and more peaceful.

Some of the promised benefits have happened, but the trade-offs have been enormous and could very well be the end of us. For example, the cost of being able to call anyone anywhere from a device that fits in your pocket is having millions of people experiencing the lives through their phone. All the benefits of the mobile phone were realized with the first car phone. Everything that has came after that point has been the trade-off that no one could imagine. Most of them negative.

Read it.

As one American university after another suspended research ties with Huawei for its alleged ties to Chinese espionage, MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte offered a full-throttle defense of the company.

“Don’t ban Huawei,” read a May 2019 column published under Negroponte’s name. “The U.S. should collaborate with leading technology companies and their research labs, rather than banning them.”

Study Shows Arctic Sea Ice Reached Lowest Point On Modern Record… In The 1940s, Not Today!

Biden Senior Director for Environmental Justice Blames “Systemic Racism” for Climate Change

Sun-Loving Bacteria May Be Accelerating Glacial Melting  (Wired ‘Science’)

Study Suggests Earth Is Losing Ice Faster Today Than 30 Years Ago  Mostly to people who are inclined to believe that sort of thing.

Attenborough’s cliff-dying walrus convinced elite Davos influencers of a global climate emergency

Carboncounter – Cars evaluted against climate targets

Earth is losing ice faster today than in the mid-1990s, study suggests  Mostly to people who are inclined to believe that sort of thing.

Read it.

Scott Alexander, formerly of Slate Star Codex (before he was doxxed by the New York Times).

Victor Davis Hanson.

So we are beginning a great reprogramming of America. The construction of Trump and all of his supporters as abettors, terrorists, seditionists, and traitors is certainly proving useful. After the Capitol conundrum, we have seen over the past two weeks a coordinated and synchronized effort by Amazon, Twitter, and Google to destroy Parler, a small conservative-friendly rival to their social media and internet monopolies. More of such humanitarian taking care of business will follow—all as preemption for the most leftwing agenda in a half-century now rolling out.

…

Serious Big Brother was never coming to America kicking and screaming in a suit and in a mile-long tie, but rather eagerly welcomed in with jeans and sneakers without socks. The First Amendment could always survive a crude, inebriated Joe McCarthy, but not so easily a social justice ex-barista, doing vanity selfies about diversity, egged on by the “progressive” media, while saving the planet, and “reining” in a hurtful, racist media.

ZMan revuews the perils of dryer lint.

or example, an increasingly common thing if you work in an office is the notice that the vents will be cleaned one night. You are told to expect some disruption of your day or maybe some things will be moved around in the office. A crew comes in to clean the vents for so everyone is safe. Residential rental properties are now required in most states to have the dryer vents cleaned once a year. In some states, home owners are required to do this too. Vent cleaning is a thing now.

It is more than just a thing. It is a booming little niche business. According to one of the rapidly growing vent cleaning companies, the demand for vent cleaning is growing at close to four percent per year. They say that the increased awareness to the dangers posed by home clothes dryers is what is driving the growth. The claim is the number of accidents caused by these appliances is making people suspicious of what’s happening in those vents, so they want all the vets cleaned regularly.

Read it.

At the time the Ehrlichs were publishing their dark prophecies, the world was at its peak of population growth, which at that point was increasing at a rate of 2.1% a year. Since then, the global population has ballooned from 3.5 billion to 7.67 billion.

But growth has slowed – and considerably. As women’s empowerment advances, and access to contraception improves, birthrates around the world are stuttering and stalling, and in many countries now there are fewer than 2.1 children per woman – the minimum level required to maintain a stable population.

Read it.

Scott Wilmot has a great post up about Joe Biden’s endless promotion of abortion rights; not surprising for a Democrat, of course. But Joe Biden describes himself as a devout Catholic, which appears to stick in Scott’s craw, just a bit. Now, my first thought is that perhaps when Mr. Biden describes himself as a devout Catholic, perhaps he is lying. Such behavior would not be completely new for Mr. Biden. But no! No less reputable a source than The New York Times ran an article yesterday (cited by Scott himself in the comment section of the thread I linked to above) with the following lead on Twitter: “President Biden is perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief in half a century. A different, more liberal Christianity grounds his life and his policies.”

Has The New York Times forgotten Bill Clinton? Every time another woman accused him of sexual assault, one could find him in the front pew of a church somewhere, with his glasses on the end of his nose in a nice, grandfatherly way, reading his Bible. The New York Times itself often used such photo-ops irrefutable demonstrations of his Christian beliefs as evidence that Mr. Clinton was an ethical man. Does The New York Times now think that was all a bunch of hooey?

The team shaking up climate models

Our infrastructure is being built based on past climate data

We do indeed.

Read it.

At least in Arizona, some Republicans remember which side they’re on.

A Million Young People Wearing Synthetic Fabrics Demand More Climate Action

I want one.

Canada is Warming at Only 1/2 the Rate of Climate Model Simulations  Guess The Science isn’t all that’s it’s cracked up to be.

Another New Study Says Warming And CO2-Induced Greening Leads To COOLING Of Land Surface Temperatures

Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

Not so’s you’d notice….

Read it.

Greene said Biden’s alleged involvement with Ukraine while serving as vice president constituted enough grounds to levy the charges.

“President Joe Biden is unfit to hold the office of the Presidency. His pattern of abuse of power as President Obama’s Vice President is lengthy and disturbing,” Greene said in a statement. “President Biden has demonstrated that he will do whatever it takes to bail out his son, Hunter, and line his family’s pockets with cash from corrupt foreign energy companies.”

“President Biden is even on tape admitting to a quid pro quo with the Ukrainian government threatening to withhold $1,000,000,000 in foreign aid if they did not do his bidding. President Biden residing in the White House is a threat to national security and he must be immediately impeached.”

Baltimore Seeking Millions for Damage Allegedly Caused by Climate Change

Can We Save the Planet, Live Comfortably, and Have Children Too?  Apparently not.

Biden Suspends Federal Oil and Gas Permits, Because Climate Change

Read it.

Aero Precision, one of the nation’s leading firearm parts and accessories manufacturers, warned Tacoma, Wash., city officials their proposed punitive gun and ammunition tax would have consequences. Officials passed the proposed increases and instituted the taxes and fees.

Aero Precision answered back. The company and its 800 employees announced plans to expand and grow their manufacturing base in nearby Lakewood, Wash. Instead of investing in more jobs, more infrastructure, and more taxes paid to the City of Tacoma, Aero is literally sending their business elsewhere.

Head ’em up, move ’em out.

They’d be still better off in Texas. Hint, hint.

Scott Johnson at PowerLine.

The inauguration put several crises vividly on display. Among them I would count a crisis of rhetoric and a crisis of doggerel. I found the rhetoric of Biden’s speech almost unbelievably flat, but the content was worse. Beneath a veneer of calls for unity he carried on a campaign of smashmouth politics. As Heather Mac Donald puts it, “It’s an odd way to seek national unity: call a significant portion of the American public white supremacists, racists, and nativists. Welcome to the Biden presidency.”

Read it.

People are always coming up with these schemes and none of them ever make it to reality.

‘The science is real’: Coastal experts hope Biden will partner to combat sea level rise  (USA Today)

Germany Weighs Electricity Rationing Scheme To Stabilize Its Now Shaky Green Power Grid

Energy vs. Social Justice Trade-Off

Study: Global Warming will Impact Children’s Nutrition

The Rise of the Eco-Greenshirts

Biden Will Sign Multiple Climate Change Orders On Wednesday, Reversing Trump Policies

As I did with my student loans.

Read it.

Funny how that happens.

The Keystone Eco-Cops

The Rational Climate e-Book

Surprise! Chinese Coal Output has Risen to 2015 Levels, Undermining Climate Pledges

UCI researchers: Climate change will alter the position of the Earth’s tropical rain belt

Study Finds Most Americans Support Making Wall Around Capitol Permanent To Keep Politicians In  Babylon Bee.

Glenn Greenwald.

The last two weeks have ushered in a wave of new domestic police powers and rhetoric in the name of fighting “terrorism” that are carbon copies of many of the worst excesses of the first War on Terror that began nearly twenty years ago. This trend shows no sign of receding as we move farther from the January 6 Capitol riot. The opposite is true: it is intensifying.

We have witnessed an orgy of censorship from Silicon Valley monopolies with calls for far more aggressive speech policing, a visibly militarized Washington, D.C. featuring a non-ironically named “Green Zone,” vows from the incoming president and his key allies for a new anti-domestic terrorism bill, and frequent accusations of “sedition,” “treason,” and “terrorism” against members of Congress and citizens. This is all driven by a radical expansion of the meaning of “incitement to violence.” It is accompanied by viral-on-social-media pleas that one work with the FBI to turn in one’s fellow citizens (See Something, Say Something!) and demands for a new system of domestic surveillance.

ZMan continues his analysis.

One of the ironies of the Trump phenomenon is that his most ardent supporters and his many opponents focused on the man, when it was never about the man. Ten years ago, no rational person would have picked Donald Trump as the face of populist discontent, much less the most consequential political figure in generations. When he ran, it was assumed it was a publicity stunt, as he had spent his life as an entertainment gadfly, finding ways to draw public attention to his real estate schemes.

Yet, as the Trump era draws to a close, both his supporters and his enemies have developed a political cult around the man. His supporters are sure he has some last trick up his sleeve to do something to save the country. His opponents are sure he has some trick up his sleeve to steal their democracy from them. So much so, in fact, they have turned the tiny internet fad called QAnon into a subversive conspiracy. There are more anti-Q fanatics now than genuine followers of it.

The post everyone misses about Trump is that he is not a politician; he doesn’t do the things that everyone expects politicians to do, nor does he say things that everyone expects politicians to say.

What he is, is a businessman. He regards mainstream Americans as his customers, and he did what he could to satisfy them. He took the things that people have been asking Republican politicians for since Goldwater (and have so seldom gotten any of them) and said, ‘You want it? You got it!’ That is the secret of his success.

But as long as people keep focusing on Trump The Man, they’re going to keep missing what he accomplished and how he Changed Everything.

Direct action! That’s the ticket!

Read it.

Ankara has imposed advertising bans on Twitter, Periscope and Pinterest after they failed to appoint local representatives in Turkey under a new social media law, according to decisions published on Tuesday.

When it comes to authoritarianism, the tech moguls are amateurs.