Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Professor Mark Boslough, University of New Mexico, has compared people ignoring the climate crisis to a criminal trying to judge whether Dirty Harry’s .44 Magnum is out of bullets.
The Climate Has a Gun
Those who dismiss risk of climate change often appeal to uncertainty, but they have it backward.
In “Climate Change Brings a Flood of Hyperbole” (op-ed, Aug. 11), Steven Koonin put himself in the unenviable position of playing down climate change precisely while we are experiencing unprecedented heat waves, storms, fires, droughts, and floods that exceed model-based expectations.
Mr. Koonin claims that regional projections are “meant to scare people.” But the paper he cites for support addresses the “unfolding of what may become catastrophic changes to Earth’s climate” and argues that “being able to anticipate what would otherwise be surprises in extreme weather and climate variations” requires better models. In other words, our current models cannot rule out a catastrophic future.
Model uncertainty is two-edged. If we’d been lucky, we’d be discovering that we overestimated the danger. But all indicators suggest the opposite. Those who dismiss climate risk often appeal to uncertainty, but they have it backward. Climate uncertainty is like not knowing how many shots Dirty Harry fired from his .44-caliber Magnum. Now that it’s pointed at our head, it’s dawning on us that we’ve probably miscalculated. By the time we’re sure, it’s too late. We’ve got to ask ourselves one question: Do we feel lucky? Well, do we?
Adj. Prof. Mark Boslough
Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-global-warming-temperature-co2-ipcc-report-11629151874
University of New Mexico
The problem with this argument is climate action is not zero cost, it is very expensive. Ignoring climate change might kill people. Diverting trillions of dollars towards addressing climate change definitely will kill people.
So what are the relative risks?
So far all climate alarmists can show us as evidence to back their demands for cash is a bunch of in my opinion questionable computer models.
But it is unequivocal that draining trillions of dollars from the productive economy would cause lives to be lost or unnecessarily shortened. Green policies which raise home heating bills are likely already killing people.
Right now we have real problems demanding our attention, like addressing the ongoing low level but potentially catastrophic risk a new and far deadlier Covid strain will emerge, and dealing with the economic dislocation, mental health consequences, and social problems created by Covid lockdowns.
Should we divert money from the Covid effort to fighting climate change? Should we downsize our militaries and abandon our allies, just as an increasingly aggressive and desperate China appears to be rapidly building their military? Should we hamstring our economies with increased tax burdens for ordinary people, or frighten off our job creating entrepreneurs with punitive wealth taxes?
If climate alarmists had tangible evidence, I would support their call. The imminent mass death of billions of people would trump other considerations. But they’ve got nothing tangible, other than a few computer print outs and a big “trust me” plea.
We all deserve better than a pack of in my opinion dubious data abuses and questionable proxy exclusions, from the people who are demanding we make such a sacrifice.
Weird analogy. The double-edged scalpel aborts more lives than wars and crimes combined. An ethical wicked solution backed by modern religion. Woke and morally broke.
“… Ignoring climate change might kill people.…”
Oh good grief, please stop buying into the nonsense.
Relax Steve, I’m not buying their BS, I’m challenging them to present actual evidence.
But don’t you mean ignoring climate change alarmism? It’s sounds like you’re agreeing they already came up with “actual evidence” when you speak of ignoring climate change . .
Figure of speech, that’s all.
To you that’s all, but to me it’s you being “played” by those who want “skeptics” to appear to be recklessly ignoring climate change that we also see occurring. If we all spoke that way, don’t you think that would reinforce that impression?
There’s a problem in using their “figure of speech” though – it underscores the false notions attached to the “figure of speech, i.e., that “climate change” is “caused by human fossil fuel use/CO2 emission,” for which there is zero empirical support.
We need to stop allowing their “figures of speech” from being the starting points for discussion. Otherwise, we just reinforce the mass lunacy.
As if that isn’t bad enough, these loonies are allowed to glibly give sermons on the “climate crisis”, which doesn’t even exist.
Eric,
What would you accept as “actual evidence”? Short of a working time machine there is not way anybody can provide “actual evidence” about what might happen in the future. The only option is to use models and then act accordingly.
Why use models that have already failed miserably?
Beyond that we don’t need time machines to tell us what the future holds. We can use science to see what happened in the past.
Over the last 7000 years or so, the Earth has been cooling, with major interruptions about every 1000 years or so. CO2 played no role in either the cooling, nor any of the interruptions in that cooling.
Going back a bit further in time, we see periods where CO2 levels were 10 to 20 times greater than today, and temperatures were the same or even cooler.
Basic science already proves that when it comes to climate, CO2 is a minor player at best.
PS: Before reconstructing the entire world’s economic system and putting millions of lives at risk, I want a little better than “it could happen”.
that would be fantastic.
Recognize the failure to predict, of the best model evidence that there is, and act accordingly.
Or, lie about the models, and act as you want.
What would you accept as actual evidence?
What is the ideal average temperature of the earth?
Are you trying to convince people here what qualifies as empirical evidence in a scientific sense? I mean really? Are you that confused?
Evidence doesn’t address “what might happen in the future”, so models are of no use. They are only useful when combined with actual, reproducible experiments. Evidence applies to that which we have actually observed in the present or in records of past events … data … measured, anecdotal or proxy.
The output of a computer model is NOT DATA. If what you feed into the model is not raw, unsmoothed, unadjusted undoctored data then your output is meaningless Ka-Ka.
GIGO is the phrase we used to use in the modeling course I took – Garbage In, Garbage Out.
The other great phrase not to be forgotten from that course was:
All models are wrong, some are useful.
It shouldn’t need to be said, but for clarity the corollary is that most are not useful.
It shouldn’t need to be said, but for clarity the corollary is that most are not useful.
Exactly. and the useful aspects are only useful for the wrong reasons. They’re used yo dissemble and project the wrong information.
Demonstrably wrong models are worse than no action at all.
All models and predictions from the alarmists have failed so far.
Their whole premise, human CO2 emissions cause catastrophic climate change, is false, as the inventors of this nonsense have confessed multiple times.
What is worse? knowingly perpetuating a lie or actually believing it?
“there is not way anybody can provide “actual evidence” about what might happen in the future.”
Izaak, this a perfect Bertrand Russell’s “Teapot” analogy. You’ll be wiser reading his take on it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
I feel totally lucky- if climate change was Dirty Harry he wouldn’t have any bulkets in his gun in the first place. He has been hittibg with the empty gun.
I would think that the many failed predictions of the climate warming crowd would be proof that there are no bullets in the gun.
Yeah, it’d be kind of like if he clicked through all six cylinders twice, checked his pockets for spare rounds twice and found them empty, and THEN asked if you “feel lucky.”
… fumbles around looking for more bullets … fumbles and drops the gun in the water … composes himself … holds up his hand as a fake gun … menacingly points his finger (at us) and then says:
“In all the confusion (that I created) you probably lost count of how many bullets are left in the gun, do you feel lucky, punk”.
“Climate change,” as they mean it, would be more like Hal Holbrooks’ “Capt. Briggs” – never even removed the gun from its holster.
Climate change “policies” are more like Dirty Harry with six bullets in the gun pointing it at your head at point blank range.
“Climate change”, as applied by the media, government and AGW true believer “scientists” isn’t really anything. It’s meaningless as all logical fallacies are. “Climate change” is a perfect example of an appeal to ambiguity … equivocation. We can’t really take it seriously. If they’re referring to AGW … then say so, instead of trying to hide behind a logical fallacy, like “consensus”.
My imagery is of a character in a comedy film (I forget which film, but Gene Wilder was perhaps the actor?) who is being threatened by a mob. He grabs a milk carton and smashes it against a counter and threatens the mob with it.
“Those who dismiss risk of climate change often appeal to uncertainty”
No, they point the uncertainty out – it’s definitely there. Like it or not.
“that exceed model-based expectations”
Any expectations based on woefully incomplete models will be, er, wrong; every time.
One question I’ve got to ask Professor Mark Boslough is ‘are you receiving treatment for your climate PTSD’?
It’s a ridiculous thing to say. Clear “reductio ad absurdam” – taking an argument to the silliest extreme because he obviously has no other argument to make. What a complete and total idiot.
He is not receiving treatment, he is receiving salary.
This tells us all we need to know about the University. Unfortunately, about almost any University. Down with Mathematics.
Down with Mathematics.
Indeed, it’s racist.
Math professors at top college/universities, including Harvard, Univ. of IL and Brooklyn College, have pontificated that mathematics is rooted in “white supremacist patriarchy” and “white social construct”. A professor at Brooklyn College, Laurie Rubel, said “the idea of math being culturally neutral is a “myth”, because 2+2=4 “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy”.
https://farleftfacts.org/white-people/math-yes-math-is-racist/
Obviously, those “professors” need to get an education.
“It is your ancestors, the Mayans, that introduced the concept of zero, the absence of value.” – Edward James Olmos as Jamie Escalante, Stand and Deliver
Somehow I doubt the Mayans were white supremacists; ditto for the Arabs who introduced Arabic Numerals.
Guess the black female NASA mathematicians who helped the US calculate flight trajectories for space missions were parading around in their KKK Halloween suits in their spare time as well.
There is just no cure for this level of stupid.
“Guess the black female NASA mathematicians who helped the US calculate flight trajectories for space missions were parading around in their KKK Halloween suits in their spare time as well.”
Buzz Aldrin, astronaut, and one of the best orbit mathematicians around, would be in a meeting discussing Apollo orbits, and Buzz always wanted to know what “the girl” thought about the calculations.
That’s high praise for “the girl”.
That’s because “computer” was the designation for the mostly female calculators who did the heavy number crunching in WW II.
Computer IS female largely because it was considered clerical work which equates to women’s work
The word computer is first recognized in 1640.
https://youtu.be/eE69LKO4dCQ
I’m trying to figure out how the Mayans introduced the concept of zero to the Europeans.
I have no idea whether the Mayans had figured out the concept of zero or not. But for Europe and the rest of the known world at that time, the concept of zero was introduced by the Indians (the ones from Asia).
Which department in the university is he with?
He’s not. He’s an ‘adjunct’ professor – means he gets paid to do a few lectures and stuff but isn’t actually part of the university faculty. Basically he’s freelance but, like most climate enthusiasts, believes that associating his name with a university gives him more credibility.
Adjunct is and isn’t meaningless, depending on what the individual does. Richard’s note above is probably a description of the most common situation, although the individual may not even get paid for said lectures.
More often in my experience it means an individual has some level of expertise and is asked to sit on a graduate student’s thesis committee. They attend meetings, review the thesis and attend the thesis defense but do no actual work for the university beyond that solitary project.
So in some cases the association with the university is pretty minimal. There are other situations where an adjunct may regularly lecture and receive financial compensation but is not “on faculty” with the institution.
Good catch on more climate nonsense, Eric (h/t Willie Soon). Not only do the doomsters models fail, they never present a cost/benefit analysis, nor do they ever go near the cost of implementation versus mitigation. While floods and droughts march along as always, NASA says the earth has undergone 10% greening, although how much is due to anthropogenic CO2 addition to the atmosphere versus natural additions is not known. Alex, I’ll take greening of the earth for a few trillion bucks.
“while we are experiencing unprecedented heat waves, storms, fires, droughts, and floods..”
I don’t understand how a science based academic can get away with a falsehood like that.
It enables him to then continue with the logical fallacy of a “false premise”.
This type of thing destroys their plea for us to have “belief in science” (when they really mean a belief in scientists.)
More like they really mean belief in activists pretending to be scientists.
Once they lost their objectivity (which was decades ago), the so-called “scientists” ceased to be worthy of the title. Once you’re pushing a “Cause,” as they are, you are no longer a scientist.
“I don’t understand how a science based academic can get away with a falsehood like that.”
Yes, he starts his article out with a lie.
The statistics show there is no unprecedented weather.
The Earth has had heatwaves, and storms and fires, and droughts, and floods since the beginning of time, and for every severe weather event we see today, we can find one in the past that is equal to or more severe than what we see currently.
It’s not that hard to find this information. A science-based writer of climate science should be aware of these statistics.
I’m not sure what the writer of this article is aware of, but he is just pushing climate change propaganda on this occasion.
Fixed that for you. Mitigation is what they are suggesting, even though they are completely wrong about the causes and the absolute futility of their proposed “fix.”
Michael Mann was listed as the co-author of the letter in the WSJ.
Falsehoods explained.
Mark should educate himself and foremost live according to his own belief system, starting yesterday.
Or he could just stop exhaling.
The UK has, sadly, just had its first mass shooting in 11 years.
The USA had 615 last year, the whole of Europe and Russia two.
and US knife crime figures don’t seem better than UK ones, before you start…
griff, congratulations on coming up with that.
Your favourite paper, The Groaniad, wants that single attack – first mass shooting in 11 years – to make a whole group of people into terrorists. Even though they haven’t actually done anything
I’m sure you probably concur with that sentiment, unhinged as it is.
Why does the UN of all people, rank the USA at around 24/25th in the World for gun crime, behind countries like India, China, & a dozen South American countries? I somehow don’t think a country like China would allow such data to openly be collected & made public, after all, Communism/Socialism cannot possibly be seen to be a fail!!!
Lets send griff to a Brazilian favela….
In almost all the countries with higher rates of gun crime, legally owning guns for private citizens is either impossible, or almost so.
Owning is firearm is one thing, being able to take it out of your safe is another.
There are legal ownership cases where the gun can only be taken out in specific cases, and is useless.
The griffter is moving from climate to social issues….the USA has a segment of the population that is prone to shooting people ….just like the UK has a segment that is prone to raping…even gang raping…but this site is about climate
I must add….guns don’t kill people – people kill people.
My point exactly, I’ve been clay-pigeon shooting for years & have never know of a gun going off all by itself, just because it felt like it!!! Anything can be used as a weapon in some way or other!!! Why not force people & tradesmen & women pay for the privilege of owning a saw, chisel, Stanley knife, etc? Over here in Britishstan, penknives & multi-tools are only allowed to be carried by tradespeople to & from their place of work!!! If they do otherwise, like me, out of over 30 years of work-habit, they are technically breaking the law & thus have become criminals!!! Last time I checked, most gun-crime in the US is carried out by criminal gangs & individuals who have very little regard for right & wrong or the law, & the guns are often illegally held for easy disposal etc, but “blood-sucking lawyers” (attributed to John Hammond in Jurassic Park) aren’t interested in such details & facts, only if they can force another Human being to do what they tell them to do, they get off on it!!! They live in the same world as public-sector bureaucrats, “I create hoops to make people jump through simply because I can!!!” We’re riddled with them over hear!!! When I took my son (then 19) clay-pigeon shooting to boost his confidence after a painful break-up, one of the instructors there was telling us over a mug of coffee, about a man who once drove nearly 70 miles to see a friend, to borrow his 12 bore, (gauge for you Colonists), he then drove all the way home, blew his wife’s head off, then the following morning calmly drove back to return the gun!!! The gun was merely an extension of the hand & arm, nothing more!!!
Anyone who expects people who routinely ignore laws, to suddenly start paying attention to gun laws, is either seriously deluded, or a liberal.
“seriously deluded, or a liberal.”
There you go repeating yourself.
They’re so deluded, they don’t even know they’re not liberal.
Let me fix that for you “Anyone who expects people who routinely ignore laws, to suddenly start paying attention to gun laws, is either seriously deluded, or a leftist.” Liberal in the modern world are a
very endangered species. The leftist stomp them down any chance they can.
You are being redundant!
Not everyone who is deluded is a liberal, but everyone who is a liberal is deluded.
The figures for rapes in the UK are skewed – more women come forward to report rapes in the UK than in the USA, but overall the UK has fewer per capita.
figures for rapes in the UK are skewed
Yes but with islamic grooming and raping the authorities claim girls under 16 – even as young as 10 or 11 – are making a lifestyle choice. How do they count that? They don’t.
Fathers have been arrested while trying to rescue their daughters. The feminists say nothing….
Neither do the Authorities concerned, just make lots of the right noises!!!
No. The ‘grooming gang’ incidents happens extremely rarely and, in actual fact, are as much a problem with Albanian immigrants as Pakistani Muslims – in all cases the gangs are arrested for the criminal activity. 2 fathers were arrested by Rotherham police while trying to rescue their daughters; what is rarely stated is that the police arrested and charged the gang, made the girls safe but the 2 fathers were drunk, violent and resisted arrest and were later just given a caution.
Rarely? Yet it is happening in every town
Pakistani and Bangladeshis are still at it – with impunity
I suppose you’ve interviewed every woman in both countries to come up with this “fact”.
If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.
And of course Swedish women began reporting rape just after their country was set on a course of mass immigration by the Left?
Actually this site is about anything that interests Anthony. Don’t fall into the camp of the whiners who want to restrict what the rest of us talk about.
“The griffter is moving from climate to social issues…”
….. and he’s going to pretend he never had his strident, idiot-brained views on sea ice and polar bears.
And so what?
Do you realise how many people are killed by arms sales from pretty much all those countries you mentioned….
Top arms exporters.
UK, France, Russia, USA…and counting!
After the tragedy of Dunblane, which turned out to be completely preventable, the Labour/Socialist guvment arbitrarily banned hand-gun ownership, probably quietly hoping for such an excuse to do so, yet gun-crime virtually doubled from around 1300 incidents a year, to around 2600 incidents within a few years, largely through poor immigration control/checks allowing criminal gangs to smuggle weapons into the UK. Socialists don’t seem to understand the concept of criminality & gang warfare in cities & towns!!!
Are you claiming that if the top arms exporters stopped exporting guns, there would be a drop in gun violence?
Guns are easy to make. Anyone with a few thousand dollars in shop equipment could start cranking them out if they wanted to.
I would think that the fact that knife violence figures track gun violence figures would be enough to show that the problem is violent criminals, not guns.
But then when you have a broken ideology to defend, looking at the actual facts is not something one tends to do.
You guys have let the griff hijack this thread with an off-topic issue.
Sorry, it is a hot button for me!
Until recently the crime rat in London than any America city, now our regressive Dimms have fixed that, you must be happy.
USA still has no border wall, Europe has a sea, Australia and NZ have an ocean.
So how is a mass shooting defined in the United States Ms. Griff?
https://www.politifact.com/article/2017/oct/04/mass-shooting-what-does-it-mean/
If someone were objective, which you have demonstrated numerous times that you are not, they would list such events after being normalized, as “per capita.”
Yes, the US knife homicide rates alone are are larger than the total homicide rates of most European countries, despite almost every kitchen in the world having one or more knives. It is a cultural phenomena. Again, were you objective, you would recognize that. You wield raw numbers like a dull butter knife, instead of like a sharp scalpel. That is one of the reasons you command no respect here.
Another fact is that when you break down violence by demographic group in both the US and other countries, you find that the same demographic groups have similar crime and violence rates, regardless of which country they live in.
I’m quite aware of that. I was trying not to go there because no one wants to talk about it.
As you are aware, the reason I am so well loved is that I have no aversion to talking about things the more genteel people avoid.
Is that a climate change indicator?
Unless you are going to claim that this mass shooting was the result of global warming, I don’t see how your post is relevant.
Griff,could give us a demographic breakdown of the mass shootings in the US?
You’re spouting utter, ignorant rot. The only reason the US gun violence is so visible is because of a free press. Most countries in the world don’t have that so we don’t get to review the statistics. Hell, In Africa, the Muslim terrorist group Boko Haram has killed tens of thousands of people. In South Africa 1000s are killed by gun, knife and club violence. That’s just two locations in Africa. On any given day in any Islamic country killings run in the thousands.
Do you really think Russia allows the world to look at their dirty laundry as the US does? They have a gang problem that’s 10 times worse than The Mafia. Russian gangs are composed of disaffected Russian special forces and KGB … trained killing machines.
Get a bloody clue!
I’ll bite: Please look at the ethnic distribution of the shootings. You will see a strong correlation with pigmentation. If we remove all heavy pigmented shootings form the list, all of a sudden we see something remarkable: low pigmentation correlates very strong with low shooting incidents (and other types of violence btw). US numbers are similar to other countries independent of gun laws.
Your move griff.
I will go one better than Professor Mark Boslough.
What he is doing is promoting a climate ponzi scheme that makes Bernie Madoff’s scheme look like chump change.
“… chump change”.
Be fair, Madoff was but one man. The climate scam is a global enterprise.
A global enterprise, with the baking of many governments.
… with hundreds of thousands of recipients for the 100s of $billions in AGW largess pouring out of the free world countries. It might as well be flushed don the toilet for all the returns received by the citizens who funded it. “Climate change” advocacy is a license to print money.
Manmade globul warming was always about wealth-redistribution, Socialism at large, they want to win over as many countries as possible & those countries will back anything where money is concerned!!!
Through the judicious use of several “crises”, since the 1950s, the peddlers of international socialism have bilked the public out of billions and come closer to their true goal than any time since socialism was pulled out of someone’s backside. Smoking, AIDS, global cooling, AGW, “climate change” and now SARS CoV-2 combined with the propaganda power of social media and a corrupt MSM. It has already been a massive redistribution of wealth.
“Model uncertainty is two-edged. If we’d been lucky, we’d be discovering that we overestimated the danger.”
Looks like we’ve been lucky then
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/un-climate-panel-confronts-implausibly-hot-forecasts-future-warming
“But all indicators suggest the opposite.”
this would make a good advert….
“shoulda gone to spec-savers”
Uncertainty is so overrated. The Biden administration is rolling out booster shots for public use while phase 1/2 clinical trials are still recruiting.
I’m in the control group for vaccines and Climate Change Mitigation,
My unvaccinated self provides a valuable data point for evaluating the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.
As for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, I’ll adapt. I have a tailor who is prepared to hem my trousers up an inch to counter the effects of sea level rise. I have also been acclimating myself to higher temperatures by Snowbirding in Florida.
Control groups are important. I have unselfishly volunteered myself for the role.
So here we have a “professor” making a ridiculous argument using both a False Analogy (climate = loaded gun) as well as the Precautionary Principle (better safe than sorry). Pathetic. But then, Climate Believers tend to rely on emotionalism rather than logic, since that is basically all they have.
Think of the children…
What about toes?
If it saves just one toe. the trillions spent will have been worth it.
I dunno
This little piggy went to market, This little piggy stayed home, This little piggy had roast beef, This little piggy had none. This little piggy went … insane all the way home
…freezing to death and starving to death in the dark if these idiots get their way and implement “climate policies.”
When they start sending out begging letters (PUH-LEEEZZZE send us money to stop climate change) and WWW and the other groups have been doing that for years, you know it’s so that they can have the 10-course lobster/shrimp/steak dinner at the MOST expensive restaurant they can find. Has nothing to do with climate change or widely spreading and rapidly mutating diseases.
It’s the refusal by Those People to acknowledge that Those People have absolutely ZERO control over what this planet does that is simply ridiculous. If they said “Save the Planet by Recycling Metal and Paper” , well, okay, that makes sense. I do that anyway. Cat food cans are aluminum and can be recycled. Newspapers can be recycled. Plastic stuff can be recycled. Less junk going into the garbage dumps.
And as cynical as this may sound, Those People are likely responsible for more poisonous junk going into the trash than you and I are. They are all embedded in more electronic junk than Buck Rogers ever dreamed of, never mind the widely distributed bugs that cause these malevolent diseases we all know about.
Save the Whales!! Save the Quails!! Save the Parrots!!! Save some Carrots (for dinner)!!!
The Planet has gotten along quite well without the dinosaurs, without giant dragonflies and monster-sized centipedes, without invasions from Outer Space and robots made out of spare parts. Nasty diseases have swept through human populations for literally thousands of years, and yet – well, we’re still here!!!
It’s like George Carlin said: The Planet is fine. The People are dingbats (except for a few fine souls we know about).
And so far, my gas bill is the same with my new, efficient gas furnace as it was with the old furnace, which finally died ahead of the winter’s cold breath. And the fridge will last another 5 to 8 years, and I will continue to use my gas-fired stove whether idiots like that political animal in NM like it or not.
Recycling aluminum probably does make sense as it is a fairly valuable resource, but other things, not so much, due to the costs of handling, transporting, and re-processing. Even paper, which we like to think of as emminently recyclable winds up costing more, as well as having less useability than new paper. Plastic used to make some sense to recycle because of the Chinese demand for it, but no more. Glass, not really. It primarily gets crushed and mixed with asphalt. Sad, I know. Even burning trash at high temperatures and using the resulting energy for electricity doesn’t appear to be economically viable.
Plus, should we ever run short of materials, dumps can be mined if and when we need the short resource. It’s more convenient when all that waste is in one known spot, waiting to be reclaimed.
Some of those giant waste dumps are so high that they generate methane from decaying contents. That can be mined and cleaned up, instead of just burning it off. That’s a practical use for dumps.
People were recycling iron, long before it became fashionable.
Ha! Yes. My mom washed and saved all those styrofoam meat trays. She didn’t reuse them for food. she used them for packing material long before anyone came up with the idea of styrofoam peanuts.
It was a
bit of a pain big to clear out her house after she died. But she saved everything to reuse long before anyone talked about recycling. It’s a raised-in-the-Great-Depression thing is what it is.I was thinking more on the line of auto wrecking yards. But what you mention is also true. My grandad was the same way. Tubes from old radios and TVs. Electric motors, gears, you name it, he probably had at least one somewhere in the garage or basement.
If your vacuum cleaner burned out a motor, he had a replacement. And if it didn’t quite fit, between the band saw and the welder, he’d make it fit. And it would work too.
I think it was Apple that started recycling the boards for phones a while back. They had recovered a real ton of gold that way. Don’t remember the year, sorry about that.
Paper can be used as an insulating material if necessary. Also, newspapers are great for soaking up spills and blocking leaky windows. It’s messy, yes, but does the job.
This is a really stupid analogy. The idiot professor didn’t even do his Dirty Harry homework! Watch the whole clip below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38mE6ba3qj8
He did indeed fire 6 shots in the melee, and after the punk surrenders he implores Harry that “I gots to know” and he dry fires the empty gun at the perp’s head – “click” (no bullets)!
So the professor’s analogy suggests Climate Change Cult is like having Dirty Harry threatening us with his 44 magnum – except Harry was BLUFFING – he knew exactly how many had already been fired – hence why he dry fired at the punk.
Stupid analogy – or a Freudian slip – saying in effect the Climate Cult is bluffing as did Dirty Harry – with no bullets in the gun!
I think you have the Dirty Harry movies confused. The one where Dirty Harry asked the punk if he felt lucky was where the perp was kneeling down on a dock at the end of the chase, and Harry asked him if he felt lucky “punk”, and the punk felt lucky and raised up to shoot Harry, and Harry blew him into the water with his last shot.
Well, he’s not always bluffing. See the end of the original Dirty Harry movie. Doesn’t end well for the perp who THINKS he’s bluffing.
As I noted above, a better analogy for the “climate crisis” is for Dirty Harry to dry fire his empty gun 12 times, check his empty pockets twice for bullets, and THEN point his gun at the perp and ask if he “feels lucky.”
Bay Area college professor suspected of setting 7 fires in California
Crazy Has been
Has been who never was.
Gary Maynard. Since the libtard media haven’t said what motivated him, I think there’s a 100% chance that he was trying to prove carbon dioxide causes fires by being an arsonist. Give him a break through, his degree was in sociology.
I’m sure it works though. How many climate crackpots could get right this multiple choice question:
Wildfires that are caused by arsonists are:
a) Wildfires that are caused by arsonists, or:
b) Wildfires that are caused by carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere.
How many people did this guy murder?
Even if he didn’t kill anyone, he should still be charged with assault with a deadly weapon and reckless endangerment.
Well, he is such a crackpot that they’re denying him bail.
More faculty lounge BS from educated idiots.
I expect that CNN will describe the beheadings as mostly peaceful.
Towel heads are already getting warmed up in Kabul:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/video-horror-kabul-taliban-begins-home-searches-public-beatings-women-scream-help-outside-airport-gate-traitors-beaten-street-40000-americans-remain-trapped-country/
“Westerners” were corrected some time ago about this – they are not “towels,” they are a “little sheet.”
They should therefore be referred to by the correct term, “Little Sheet Heads.”
Thanks to the UN, we know that the Taliban is going to observe the rights of women and girls. The UN just issued a strongly worded press release.
That will learn em.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/critics-un-ambassador-press-statement-taliban
Yes, but if they transgress, we know that the UN will wag a very stern finger in their general direction, then give the democratic west a stern talking to for letting it happen in the first place!!! When will the West learn, this free-enterprise capitalist democracy crap is an awful philosophy, dreadful, terrible, wicked, you should all give your money & technology away to poor countries, (easily manipulated by us)!!! Rant over!!!
Need a quote around “educated.” Or a better, more applicable term…indoctrinated, brainwashed, you get the idea…
It is not unusual that commercial offers will be made for $0 capital cost in exchange for resource extraction. The stated project value is notional for future payback in tonnes of something-or-other needed by the Chinese economy.
Search for ”Taliban sitting on $1 trillion worth of minerals” to get a sense of Chinese longterm planning….the money we send them to buy cheap goods, goes to own the future mineral production somewhere in the world.
Portrayal of guns in movies is a testament to the uselessness of physic education.
I get it: movies don’t have to be realistic. Sometimes the plot needs an unrealistic element. We tolerate it.
But why does the bad guy jumps in the air and travels at least one meter after the good guy fired at him, while standing on his feet with no pod or back support? What’s the point? How does it help the story unfolding? Why can’t the bad guy fall in place?
Is Harry’s gun loaded or not! There is a 50 percent chance of being right and only Harry knows for sure. According to the analogy the damage from climate change has a 50 percent chance of happening one way or the other. Hardly worth the investment demanded and the aggravation.
There is no way to repeat the experiment and no probability here.
Given the (lack of) “quality” of the “scientific basis” (using the term loosely here) for the CAGW bullshit, the more correct Dirty Harry analogy is dry fire the weapon 12 times, search pockets twice for spare rounds and come up empty, THEN point gun at perp and ask if he “feels lucky.”
IYI Boslough writes:
“Climate uncertainty is like not knowing how many shots Dirty Harry fired from his .44-caliber Magnum. Now that it’s pointed at our head, it’s dawning on us that we’ve probably miscalculated. By the time we’re sure, it’s too late. We’ve got to ask ourselves one question: Do we feel lucky? Well, do we?”
His “we’ve probably miscalculated” can go either way to the issue. The real point is that Boslough is arguing from precaution about things unknowable.
This is the over-wrought Precautionary Principle lie by Professor Boslough. He’s probably continuing to use it on his new students, fresh minds still unable to adequately understand, parse through and critically evaluate the propaganda he spews at them.
Dr. Michael Crichton took apart the precautionary principle in his fiction, thriller novel State of Fear. He wrote:
Intellectual yet Idiots (IYI) like Professor Boslough are why the homeless populations are exploding across US West Coast cities. Liberal policies on trying to reduce homelessness with claimed intent to do one thing, end up causing the exact opposite to actually occur.
The same is going to happen with Climate Change policy if we allow these Libtard IYI’s to carry through with it. The very thing they claim to want to avoid, their policies will produce via energy poverty and the resulting destruction of environment in the coming decades as people become desperate for food and fuels to sustain them and their families.
The world is now filled with these libtard IYI’s and their pursuit of policies that end up doing the exact opposite of what they claimed they wanted.
I’ve said this elsewhere: China’s REAL interest in Afghanistan is the rare earths in the mountains of that miserable country. The USGS did a survey a while back – don’t remember exactly when – on the mineral wealth there, and that pathetic country that still lives in the past is awash in those rare earths. When China gets what it wants — and there was a photo last week of the current head of the Taliban with a Chinese ambassador after they “did a deal” – they won’t give a crap about Afghanistan itself.
Just so you all know, China’s missile resources include long-range missiles that have a range of up to 18,000 miles – among other types of boom-boom stuff. And China is building missile bases in the desert well to the west of Beijing, the assumption from DOD being that they are for nuclear missiles.
Meantime, the US is attempting to evacuate our people from the AO. Worse than the last days in Saigon.
The professor is another educated idiot spouting off, as Tucker Carlson pointed the other night we are not being ruled by a meritocracy but and idiototocracy. Somehow promoting people because the sex, sexual orientation and skin color is not working out. It about time we get back to Martin Luther King dream Of “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.” Character is lacking in America today and so is merit, until those two thing are brought into the forefront of who we elect and lead, we will pay dearly.
“The professor is another educated idiot”, “The professor is another poorly educated idiot “.
There, all fixed!!!
I become ever more convinced daily that the propaganda of university education being the be all & end all of education & learning, has gripped the world!!! Still recall having dinner with a Cambridge Professor after an evening professional lecture, & realised that he was very clever, knew lots of theory on structural engineering, but hadn’t a clue about practical structural engineering. I wouldn’t step inside any structure he had designed!!! Would he have lasted outside of the academic world? Probably not IMHO!!!
Buy this magazine or we will shoot the dog.
For the scoop on the self-aggrandizing adjunct professor Mark Boslough, see my earlier coverage in his endless campaign against good science at The Mark Boslough Affair.
Chinese science and hard work by students wins again. NM science is more like Afghan exit process. The hollowing out of US science leaves screaming academics in its decayed place.
The late Chauncey Starr made the reasoned claim that people tolerate risk in proportion to their subjective, perceived benefit. Thus, the often maligned nuclear power industry is not seen by the general public as providing sufficient benefit to justify the inflated risk-perception created by the MSM.
In a similar manner, the climate alarmists, and their know-nothing, professional wordsmith apologists, work to convince the public that there is no benefit from fossil fuels, and attempt to convince the public that the existential risks are far greater than can be justified.
Therefore, we have a situation where the MSM is attempting to stampede the public in a direction to renounce fossil fuels, and to work against their own best self-interest. We are being encouraged to drink the Kool-Aid as a way to salvation. Even the adjunct professor from NM should know how that turns out.
The electorate needs just the facts, and nothing but the facts (Thank you, ma’am!) to decide if there is sufficient reason to roil our economy, and cover vast swaths of the land with wind turbines and photovoltaic arrays. The MSM has become (perhaps well-meaning, but misguided) an efficient propaganda machine. However, there is an old adage: “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
Not buying the good intentions theory. It’s all about money and power, along with a bit of wanting applause from the other virtue signalers.
Certainly there is an aspect of corruption. However, I’m sure that there are at least some who believe that they are doing the right thing for the right reasons.