Saturday roundup

 Christopher J. Ferguson, writing at Arc Digital, says that a new paper published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences explores the possibility that a self-perception of being a victim may be a personality trait. 

Josh Hammer has a piece at Newsweek entitled "The Toxicity of the Permanent Outrage Mentality." One reason it tends to be permanent is that it's a lucrative career path:

The unfortunate reality is that, in our modern political and media ecosystem, a permanently aggrieved, outraged, victimized mentality pays well. For the charlatans and hucksters of "anti-racism" and "critical race theory," therefore, conceding that a development such as Chauvin's conviction might indicate that America's criminal justice system is not "systemically racist" is unconscionable. Indeed, an entire industry has been established to perpetuate this rotten myth. "A post-racial America would be an unmitigated disaster" for this industry, David Azerrad recently wrote for Newsweek. "Instead of charging $6,000 an hour lecturing corporate America on its white privilege, Robin DiAngelo would be selling plastic jewelry on the Home Shopping Network."

At It Bears Mentioning, John McWhorter's Substack newsletter, he says it's time to face facts about police shootings and race:

Whenever the national media reports on a black person killed by cops, we must ask ourselves “Would a white cop not have done that if the person were white?”

Because: we are taught that white (and even non-white) cops ice black people (usually men) out of racism. It’s possibly subconscious, but in the heat of the moment, they revert animalistically to their white supremacist assumption of black animality and pull that trigger.

This is why so many can only bristle at the idea that George Floyd did not die because he was black.

It’s why now, when the cop who killed Daunte Wright not only says she mistook her gun for a taser, and is even recorded as having done so, legions of people still insist on parsing it as evidence of “racism.” The idea is, I suppose, that she wouldn’t have made that mistake, would have been more prudent, if Daunte Wright was instead a white guy named Donald White.

* * *

Here is why we need that mental exercise. Tony Timpa was quite white and was killed quite in the way that Floyd was, including it being recorded.

AND white people have been killed when cops mistook their guns for tasers. I wonder why no one ever heard about this one beyond one day in Philadelphia? (Wait – there will be objection that the shot didn’t actually kill this guy. But that’s random – it could have, easily.) There are many others -- there has been media coverage this week of cases where cops made the mistake that Officer Potter did towards Daunte Wright (where the person shot died). You can be quite sure that if their authors had found that the mistake only happened when the victims were black, we’d know by now.

This is a dog that didn’t bark and for a reason – that this week’s headlines have notbeen about how cops only mistake their guns for tasers when they are dealing with a black man is because … wait for it … they don’t! I suggest you take a little time and do a quick search on the cases listed by media articles like this. When the victim is black, it’s noted – big surprise – and quite often, the victim simply is not. By that I mean that often the victim was white. The journalists seeking to show that cops only mistake guns for tasers when they are confronted with a black person couldn’t find it and thus just write that officers have sometimes been “confused” while studiously leaving race out of it. Their head editors have made sure they did. 

In this vein, what you didn’t hear this week is that cops killed a teen pointing a toy gun at them. Many will recall that cops killed (black) Tamir Rice for holding a toy gun, with this considered a prime demonstration that cops kill out of racist animus – why just a teen waggling a toy around? I mentioned this new case in my Twitter feed this week and have been bemused to see almost Talmudic exegesis arguing that the killing of Rice was “worse” because the white kid was actually aiming the gun at the cops and then picked up a knife. 

But the answers to that are these.

1) The cops first shot the white kid when he aimed the gun but before he held up the knife, and if we rolled the tape again they could have killed him right when he held up the gun – the bullet they fired then only happened by chance not to kill him. (Say it’s wrong of me to reason that closely and I ask why you think so. Roll your eyes, click your tongue, and then explain. But you can’t.)

2) Evidence is likely forever unclear as to whether Rice seemed to be “reaching for” that gun when the cops came to him. Of course Rice did not deserve to die regardless, whatever he may have been doing in his pocket at that moment with his toy. But the iconic idea of Rice just looking off into the distance waving a toy at the sky is not the indisputable truth. 

3) Most important – if this white kid were black, then even if the cops had shot him for aiming the toy right at them and then killed him when he raised the knife, we can be quite sure that the idea would be that the cops should have understood he was mentally disturbed – i.e. trying “suicide by cop” – and that they only killed him in seeing him as a “black body” rather than as a person.

Really – imagine him not named Ham but Harrison, and black. People would be in the streets, some of them looting, in protests against the black boy who aimed a toy gun at white officers and got killed for it – even if he then held up a knife. It’d be all about how officers need better training and such. 

Here, some will just hate, growl, twist, seek to deny. I’m too “assimilated” to really understand, etc. But more than a few know that’s all, frankly, manure. They will be open to the following:

Cops unjustifiably kill white people all the time and in greater numbers than they kill black people.

* * *

But let’s go back to what the enlightened take is. To wit: I am pointing out mere outliers. Surely the endless succession of black people killed by cops that we can mentally review is the main issue. Okay, now and then a white kid gets killed too. But isn’t pointing them out just what a “conservative” denialist about racism does in order to curry the favor of racist white people and make money speaking before them?

I love this notion, in that I turn down so very many offers to speak on race, including on Zoom, simply because I have other stuff to do, but I digress.

The problem is the sheer volume of the white cases. We just don’t hear about them. As I write, what about Hannah Williams? Or this hideous case? No, I’m not laboriously smoking these cases out when they are just weird exceptions to a general rule. They are the norm. It’s just that they don’t make national news. It really is that simple, and that sad, and that destructive to our national conversation about race.

Funny thing – nothing makes this clearer than the Washington Post database of cop murders. Just pour a cup of coffee and look at what it shows, month after month, year after year. As South Park’s Cartman would put it, “Just, like, just, just look at it. Just look at it.”

Yet, the enlightened take on the issue serenely sails along as if that database proves that cops ice black men regularly while white men only end up in their line of fire now and then by accident. The database reveals a serious problem with cops and murder, period, quite race-neutrally.

* * *

To wit, cops, when things get tense, are quite okay with depriving white people of life. It can be hard to imagine this, because of how cop killings of black people has become essentially the keystone of the idea that blackness means oppression. 

But true enlightenment, my friends, means opening yourself up to counterintuitive realities.

Rafael Mangual, writing at City Journal, asks "Who killed Adam Toledo?" 

The immediate cause of Toledo’s death was the bullet fired by Officer Stillman. But it’s worth examining how a 13-year-old boy ended up in a full sprint through a dark alley at 2:30 AM with a gun in his hand and a police officer on his tail.

Start a few minutes before the shooting. Though it hasn’t gotten much attention, a video compilation that the Chicago Police Department released includes footage that seems to show Toledo walking with a young man before one (or both) fired the eight or nine shots at a passing vehicle near the alley where the police encountered Toledo. Exactly who pulled the trigger remains unclear (the footage is grainy), though CNN reported last Friday, citing prosecutors, that both Toledo’s hand, and the gloves of the man he was with, tested positive for gunshot residue. According to police, that man is a 21-year-old named Ruben Roman, who was arrested at the scene for allegedly obstructing Officer Stillman as he gave chase.

All indications are that Roman was exactly the kind of negative influence to Toledo that loving parents stuck in high-crime neighborhoods stay up nights worrying about. Chicago’s publicly available arrest database shows that Roman has been collared at least six times by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) since 2017. He has at least one felony conviction, for a gun offense, for which he was apparently sentenced to probation. According to a Chicago police officer (who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity), Roman is listed as a member of the Latin Kings street gang in the CPD’s database.

Local thugs often lure impressionable children into the gangster lifestyle they glorify by promising protection and brotherhood, and Roman seems an illustrative example. But he didn’t protect or care about his young charge the morning of March 29. In fact, as shown on the body-worn camera footage of the officers arriving after Toledo was shot, Roman didn’t shed a tear after Toledo was shot but pretended not to know the 13-year-old at all. Roman’s decision not to provide police with information about Toledo’s identity meant that the boy would be listed as a “John Doe” in the CPD’s paperwork, and his family couldn’t be notified. Toledo’s body remained unidentified in the morgue for two days before the police were able to contact his mother.

This is a common story, sadly. People like Roman corrupt kids like Toledo, and put them on paths that lead to untimely deaths, incarcerations, and perpetrations of evil. Street gangs recruit child soldiers into their turf wars, which turn playgrounds into battlefields and leave parents holding the bodies of the children caught in the crossfire; and they should be shamed for it.

Quin Hilyer, writing at the Washington Examiner, says, "No, Mr. President, the 'Soul of America' Isn't Racist." 

A very prominent reason why the Department of Education should never have been created and why it should be dismantled yet this afternoon: when poisonously leftist administrations, such as the present one, get hold of it, they turn it in a perniciously corrosive direction. Alex Nester at the Washington Free Beacon has the details:

The Biden administration this week proposed a rule that would encourage public schools to adopt radical, racially driven curricula in American history and civics classes.

The Department of Education on Monday proposed a rule that would prioritize federal funding for education groups that help schools develop and implement antiracist teaching standards. If the rule takes effect, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education would increase grants to woke groups across the country.

School districts in recent months have increased their efforts to weave critical race theory—the idea that America's political and economic systems are inherently racist—into K-12 curriculum standards. The Education Department's proposal signals the Biden administration's support for this trend.

The rule would allocate federal funding for education contractors who work to "improve" K-12 curriculum by promoting "racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically responsive teaching and learning practices." The rule would also require the Education Department to encourage social studies curricula that teach students about "systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history."

The Education Department claims that the coronavirus pandemic and "ongoing national reckoning with systemic racism" make changes to the education system necessary. The proposal cites the New York Times‘s 1619 Project and antiracist scholar Ibram X. Kendi's criticisms of American education.

"Schools across the country are working to incorporate antiracist practices into teaching and learning," the proposal reads. "It is critical that the teaching of American history and civics creates learning experiences that validate and reflect the diversity, identities, histories, contributions, and experiences of all students."

The proposal will undergo a month-long notice-and-comment period, during which interested parties can submit questions on the rule to the department. The department must respond to each individual comment prior to releasing a final draft of the rule, which can take months or even years depending on the number of comments received.

Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow who has documented the antiracist push in schools and federal institutions, told the Washington Free Beacon that this decision shows the Biden administration's true colors.

"President Biden is structuring the Department of Education's programs to incentivize critical race theory in America's public schools," Rufo said. "Biden campaigned as a moderate, but this decision would bring a radical and unpopular ideology into the classroom. The federal government should reject the principles of race essentialism, collective guilt, and neo-segregation, not encourage them in the public education system."

The Biden administration's move follows national trends to weave anti-American ideology into public schools. The Illinois State Board of Education in February approved a set of learning standards that asks teachers to "mitigate" behaviors that stem from "Eurocentrism" and "unearned privilege."

California has considered adopting standards that teach kids to "resist" Christianity and other elements of the "Eurocentric neocolonial condition." And the North Carolina State Board of Education in February adopted a new set of K-12 history curriculum that teaches high schoolers to "compare how some groups in American society have benefited from economic policies while other groups have been systematically denied the same benefits."

Think STEM is safe from this garbage? Here's what the Virginia DOE is up to:

The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) is moving to eliminate all accelerated math options prior to 11th grade, effectively keeping higher-achieving students from advancing as they usually would in the school system.

Loudoun County school board member Ian Serotkin posted about the change via Facebook on Tuesday. According to Serotkin, he learned of the change the night prior during a briefing from staff on the Virginia Mathematics Pathway Initiative (VMPI).

"[A]s currently planned, this initiative will eliminate ALL math acceleration prior to 11th grade," he said. "That is not an exaggeration, nor does there appear to be any discretion in how local districts implement this. All 6th graders will take Foundational Concepts 6. All 7th graders will take Foundational Concepts 7. All 10th graders will take Essential Concepts 10. Only in 11th and 12th grade is there any opportunity for choice in higher math courses."

Writing at The Gospel Coalition, Kevin DeYoung reviews Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Renewal by Duke Kwon and Greg Thompson. DeYoung is far more cordial than I'd have been, lauding the book as "both accessible and academic":

Kwon and Thompson have a knack for breaking down complex ideas into helpful categories. For example, they argue that racism can be understood in four ways: as personal, with the need for repentance; as relational, with the need for reconciliation; as institutional, with the need for reform; or cultural, with the need for repair (32-44). There are more lists and rubrics like this throughout the book, many of them insightful and useful.

Kwon and Thompson are also to be commended for avoiding the history-as-screed template. The tone is strong at times, but never incensed. 

But he soon enough comes to the work's problematic essence:

The work of reparations outlined in the book is so expansive and so nonspecific as to be impossible to ever fulfill. Reparations, we are told is “ultimately redeeming for everyone, both those who give and those who receive.” It is an opportunity for all of us to finally be healed (181). But how does that work? When will the debt be relinquished? How will we know that the reparations are complete and the healing can begin? According to Kwon and Thompson, “the call of reparations is not merely for a check to be written or for a debt to be repaid but for a world to be repaired” (178). By this logic, reparations will be our work until the end of the age.

Either Kwon and Thompson equivocate on what they mean by reparations, or, if their definition on page 185 (quoted above) is true, Whites (and Asians?) can never in this life truly be forgiven of the debts they owe. How does that bring healing to everyone? How does this square with the gospel? How does this make sense of Christ’s celebratory meal with Zacchaeus? When do we get to hear Jesus say to the repentant sinner, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham”? If reparations are to be “fixed in the church’s imagination and fundamental to its vocation as the language of repentance and reconciliation,” it would be good to hear more about how we can all find forgiveness for our sins and freedom from condemnation in Christ.

He uses the book's discussion of a repurposed church building in Memphis to really drive home his point:

The eschatological vision in Reparations is about Memphis’s Clayborn Temple. At first a White church, then a Black church after White flight, the church was at the center of Memphis’s civil rights struggle and was for years home to a Black congregation. Now, as Kwon and Thompson tell us, the famous Clayborn Temple is quiet, empty, braced with scaffolding, and boarded up.

But leaders like Anasa Troutman, “a brilliant and charismatic African American woman in her mid-forties” (184), see what the Temple will one day become. And what is that vision? Perhaps a worshiping, evangelizing church committed to racial healing and racial justice? Maybe a revitalized Black church committed to the gospel and its neighbors? Or maybe a multiethnic church learning to love like Christ and share his love with others? This is the vision of Clayborn Temple that closes the last chapter of the book:

Here is where the artist’s studio will be. This will be the performing arts center. This will be the space for education and community meetings. Walking outside, she continues: Out here will be the business incubator, financial services offices, and community kitchen. That land over there will be part of a community-owned cooperative. . . . [Troutman] sees a world healed from the ravages of White supremacy. A world in which we are emancipated from its lies to live in the freedom of the truth. A world in which we are delivered from White supremacy’s control so that we can live together in the fullness of our shared power. A world whose wonders are shared by all and stewarded for the good of everyone. A world in which people don’t spend their lives laboring for justice but have the opportunity to move beyond justice and into joy. What she sees, in short, is reparations. Reparations. Reparations is the cry of the ages. This is the opportunity of the moment. And this is the call of the church. (206–207)

A stirring conclusion to be sure. Sermonic, eschatological, and essentially religious. But it is not a beatific vision that depends on Christian categories or the Christian story. To be sure, it can draw from the Christian tradition in so far as the Christian tradition has a lot to say about restitution and restoration. And yet, the moral arc and the teleological aim do not require a Christian accounting of the world. Suppose American history is as bad as Kwon and Thompson aver. Suppose our corporate guilt is everything they say it is. Suppose everything they want to see under the banner of reparations would be good for our country and good for our communities. The religious vision is still one that I find more in line with a community organizer’s dream for America than a distinctively Christian one. It is a vision where sin is White supremacy and salvation comes from a lifetime of moral exertion. It is a vision where the church’s mission is to change the world and heaven is a world of art studios and co-ops. It is a vision where urban renewal feels central and the grace of the risen Christ feels peripheral. It is a vision filled with many noble aspirations, but one ultimately that depicts a future where the White guilt never dies and the reparations never end. 

Holman Jenkins at the Wall Street Journal looks at Steven Koonin, a scientist who definitely has his head on straight regarding the global climate.

Of course she is: Kimberly Guilfoyle is going to serve as the national chair for the Senate race of Eric Greitens, who had to resign as Missouri governor in 2018 due to sexual misconduct and donor charity list misuse scandals. 

One final note about today's roundup: You will note that all but one of the linked articles and columns have to do with the destructiveness of leftism. The lone exception is a pretty egregious example of the rot that is almost certainly killing the Republican Party, and I fully understand that that rot extends to the GOP still not having come to grips with its cowardice in the face of what happened January 6,  but I cannot sign onto the argument that that cowardice and what, in general, has happened to the party and far too much of the Right over the past five years, dwarfs what the Left is up to. We have to walk and chew gum at the same time. The sum total of what I've presented here today in most of these items is a grim picture of post-America's prospects. The nation is under assault from two directions. 

 

 

 

 

The global climate is not in any kind of crisis

 Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloane Professor, Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences at MIT, and William Happer, the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor, Emeritus of Physics at Princeton have penned a must-read article at National Review about climate truth versus climate alarmism. 

It really doesn't present any information or insights beyond what's been around as long as scientists with integrity have been pushing back against the alarmists, but it's presented in an orderly, sensible way that doesn't overwhelm the lay reader with the torrent of charts and graphs that usually characterizes climate pissing matches. 

Here's. the straight-up truth of the matter:

We are both scientists who can attest that the research literature does not support the claim of a climate emergency. Nor will there be one. None of the lurid predictions — dangerously accelerating sea-level rise, increasingly extreme weather, more deadly forest fires, unprecedented warming, etc. — are any more accurate than the fire-and-brimstone sermons used to stoke fanaticism in medieval crusaders.

True believers assert that this emergency can be averted only by eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions. Greenhouse gases include ubiquitous water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, and above all, carbon dioxide, a gas released when fossil fuels are burned to power transportation, generate electricity, and are used to manufacture amenities of modern life.

Without those greenhouse gases, life would be much chillier on planet Earth.

Lindzen and Happer note the reason the alarmists choose to pick on carbon dioxide among those gases. It's kind of hard to make a villain out of clouds:

So far, climate crusaders have refrained from vilifying water vapor and clouds, which make the largest contribution to greenhouse warming of the earth. Carbon dioxide, demonized as “carbon pollution,” is an improbable villain. Green plants use the energy of sunlight to manufacture sugar and other organic molecules of life from carbon dioxide and water molecules. A byproduct of photosynthesis is the oxygen of our atmosphere. Each human exhales about two pounds of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide every day.

There's a historical angle. Humans tend to be nicer to each other in warm periods than chilly ones:

No scientist familiar with radiation transfer denies that more carbon dioxide is likely to cause some surface warming. But the warming would be small and benign. In fact, history shows that warmings of a few degrees Celsius — which extended growing seasons — have been good for humanity. The golden age of classical Roman civilization occurred during a warm period. Cooling periods, which were accompanied by barbarian invasions, famines, and plagues, have been bad. Barbara Tuchman characterizes such periods as “the calamitous 14th century” in her book, A Distant Mirror.

All those trees and plants that the environmentalists wax rhapsodic about dig that carbon dioxide:

More carbon dioxide will certainly increase the productivity of agriculture and forestry. Over the past century, the earth has already become noticeably greener as a result of the modest increase of CO2, from about 0.03 percent to 0.04 percent of atmospheric molecules. More CO2 has made a significant contribution to the increased crop yields of the past 50 years, as well. The benefits to plants of more CO2 are documented in hundreds of scientific studies.

There's no downside to its benefits. Carbon dioxide is a perfectly innocuous gas:

Water vapor, and the clouds that condense from it, warm the earth’s surface at least four times more than does carbon dioxide. Paleoclimate data show little correlation between CO2 and climate, suggesting that the effects of CO2 are, in fact, marginal. Doubling CO2 concentrations alone should increase the earth’s surface temperature by about 1 C. Climate crusaders use computer models that include clouds, convective heat transfer in the atmosphere and oceans, and other factors to claim that “positive feedbacks” increase the predicted warming to 4.5 C or more. Supposedly, the direct consequences of any change are amplified. This would violate Le Chatelier’s principle that says “when a settled system is disturbed, it will adjust to diminish the change that has been made to it.”

Crusaders like to claim that the climate violates Le Chatelier’s principle and has “tipping points.” Given the much higher and changing levels of carbon dioxide that prevailed over much of the earth’s history, it is unlikely that life would have survived if such tipping points existed.

Neither contemporary observations nor the geological record support computer-based claims that CO2 is the “control knob” for the earth’s climate. Warmings, similar to or larger than the current one, have been observed many times in the past few millennia when there has been negligible use of fossil fuels. A thousand years ago Greenland really was warmer than today and supported Norse farmers who grew crops such as barley, which cannot be grown there now because of the cold.

And methane and nitrous oxide have even less of an impact than carbon dioxide:

In another spasm of crusading fervor, some climate warriors want to do away with traditional farming and ranching because they are sources of the minor greenhouse gases, such as methane from ruminant livestock, paddy rice, etc., and nitrous oxide, mainly from fertilizer use. (In this context, the word “minor” should be explained: The warming per added methane molecule is about 30 times greater than the warming per added carbon-dioxide molecule. Carbon-dioxide molecules are being added to the atmosphere at 300 times the rate of methane molecules. So the warming added each year from methane is about 10 times less than the small warming from carbon dioxide.) This could threaten the livelihoods of farmers in countries whose governments have signed on to the Paris agreement. But, as noted above, the warming from methane is only one-tenth of the modest, beneficial warming of more carbon dioxide.

Governments around the world should not be interfering with the free market, which shows that dense and steadily available forms of energy like oil and natural gas are preferable - and preferred by entities freely entering into the millions of exchanges of energy for money that happen every day - to diffuse and intermittent energy forms. 

We certainly don't need any Paris agreement.

Its not going to be easy to reverse the prevalent notions about this subject, but I'd say that making it a matter of freedom versus coercion is the most effective way to go about it. 

 

 

 

 

 

Some encouraging instances of Western states (beyond the borders of the US) casting off climate alarm hooey in favor of normal-people economic growth

The Heartland Institute's H. Sterling Burnett, writing at The Washington Examiner, gives us reason to start our weekend on a cheery note:

In mid-March, the Forum for Democracy (FvD), a fledgling political party just three years old, tied for the largest number of seats, 12, in the divided Dutch Senate in the 2019 elections. FvD takes a decidedly skeptical stance on climate change. On the campaign trail, Thierry Baudet, FvD’s leader, said the government should stop funding programs to meet the country’s commitments to international climate change agreements, saying such efforts are driven by “climate change hysteria.”

In Finland, climate change policies became the dominant issue in the April 14 election, as support for climate skepticism suddenly surged. While all the other parties proposed plans to raise energy prices and limit energy use, when all the votes had been counted, the Finns Party, which made the fight against expensive climate policies the central part of its platform, came out the big winner with the second-highest number of seats in Parliament. Just two months prior to the election, polls showed the Finns Party's support hovering below 10%. But after the the party made battling alarmist climate policies its main goal, its popularity soared, delivering it the second-most seats in Finland’s legislature — 39, just one seat behind the Social Democratic Party, with 40 seats. Even the New York Times noted the Finns Party’s electoral surge was based on its expressed climate skepticism.

In Alberta, where the economy declined after Prime Minister Trudeau’s climate policies were enacted, voters on April 16 threw out the reigning Premier Rachel Notley and her New Democratic Party, which supported federal climate policies. The United Conservative Party, headed by newly elected Premier Jason Kenney, took over after vowing to scrap the province’s carbon tax and every other policy in NDP’s climate action plan. As part of that effort, Kenney said he would reverse plans to accelerate the closure of the province’s coal power plants and its cap on emissions from the oil sands. In addition, Kenney says he will challenge the federal government’s climate impositions in court and streamline regulations hampering the province’s critical oil and gas industry and pipeline construction.

Good stuff!

What these snot-nosed little urchins who confront government officials about the global climate need to be told

As LITD has discussed before, there's some anecdotal evidence out there that a trend is emerging by which school children confront legislators and basically extort them over the subject of the global climate. We all know about the gaggle of them that confronted Senator Feinstein in her office with the not-so-veiled message that they'd brand her as indifferent to this "crisis" in the public's mind if she didn't immediately get on board with their demands. And a couple of days earlier, I saw the same thing played out on the local level, with kids confronting the city council.

In that case, they cited the usual litany of fires, droughts, floods and hurricanes.

Okay, kiddies, here's what you need to know before you do any further spouting off:

Temperatures have risen by tenths or hundredths of a degree in recent years – less than the margin of error, and most of the “highest temperatures on record” have been in urban areas, where local manmade heat skews the data. We’re also experiencing record cold and snow in numerous locations.
The average prediction by 102 climate models is now a full degree Fahrenheit abovewhat satellites are measuring. Michael Mann’s climate model could concoct hockey sticks from telephone numbers and other random numbers. Are we supposed to trust these models on critical energy policy?

Violent tornadoes (F3 to F5) averaged 56 per year from 1950 to 1985. But from 1986 to 2018 only 34 per year touched down in the USA on average – and for the first time ever not one did in 2018. The March 3 Alabama tornado was tragic, and the 2-mile-wide 2013 Oklahoma City monster lasted 40 minutes. But the 1925 Tri-State Twister was a mile wide, traveled a record 220 miles, lasted a record 3.5 hours, and killed a record 695 people.

Hurricanes becoming more frequent and intense? From 1920 through 1940, ten Category 3-5 hurricanes made US landfall; from 1960 through 1980, eleven; 1980 through 2000, ten; 2001 through 2018, nine. There is no trend. Moreover, Harvey and Irma in 2017 were the first category 3-5 hurricanes to make U.S. landfall in a record twelve years. The previous record was nine years, set in the Civil War era.

A warmer Arctic? The Washington Post did report that “the Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer, and in some places seals are finding the water too hot.” But that was in 1922!
Polar bear populations are the highest on record: between 24,500 and 28,500 or more of them!
Oceans cannot become “more acidic,” because they are not and have never been acidic. Earth’s oceans are slightly alkaline. That slight alkalinity has decreased slightly (from 8.2 on the pH scale to 8.1) over the past few decades. But they are not getting acidic … and won’t anytime soon.
Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is the miracle molecule without which most life on Earth would cease to exist. In fact, the more CO2 in the air, the faster and better crop, forest and grassland plants grow – and the better they can withstand droughts, diseases, and damage from insects and viruses.

In fact, a slightly warmer planet with more atmospheric CO2 would be tremendously beneficial for plants, wildlife and humanity. A colder planet with less carbon dioxide would greatly reduce arable land extent, growing seasons, wildlife habitats, crop production and our ability to feed humanity. 

And today's Exhibit A of an utterly worthless Republican:

Millions of Americans are exasperated and angry about Republicans like Congressman John Shimkus of Illinois, who recently whined that it’s “just not worth the fight anymore” to battle climate alarmism – and protect our nation’s and our children’s future. These elected officials badly need spinal implants. Or they should resign and turn their seats over to someone who will fight for us.

"Just not worth the fight anymore." How do you sleep at night, Representative Shimkus? If Western civilization does indeed crumble, the likes of you will be culpable.

If one has even a subatomic particle of integrity, one never gives up on insisting that the truth get an airing in the public square.

 

Saturday roundup

An absolutely lovely essay at The Catholic Thing by Anthony Esolen. Seriously, I can't think of a more apt characterization than lovely:

A long time ago I wrote, in an article “The Lovely Dragon of Choice,” that the best things in our lives do not come as a result of our choice or planning.  You cannot draw up a blueprint for the manufacture of joy.  To the extent that you try, you render yourself numb to the possibility of joy.  The Spirit blows where it will.

I am teaching at Thomas More College, where there is much joy, and perhaps more of what I’ve called joy’s country cousin, mirth.  It is not planned.  It is the natural effervescence of young people who like one another, because they do know one another, all of them.

We are too small for loneliness.  They like one another, and they sometimes fall in love, because they have not been handed over, in libertarian manacles, to the vices of our time.  For there is no sin without those who suffer from it, as the collapse of family life and community life in our time has shown.

Yesterday as I was walking to class, two of my students, an alto and a bass, were singing “White Christmas” out of the window, in harmony, hailing the arrival of the first snow.  They sometimes hiccoughed in their harmony for laughing.  I sat at lunch next to a student and a colleague, the former carving up the latter over a chessboard.  Every day I see things I have not seen before.  They are ordinary things, in order, and not the result of a committee.

There is an intellectual and artistic liveliness among them too.  One of them, perhaps the quietest of all, spent fifteen minutes asking me questions about free verse, blank verse, why stress was the most prominent feature of English verse, whether that was so in other languages, and where he could learn more about the matter.  I gave him a book to read.

Another came by to talk about the interconnections among Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, the Book of Job, and the first chapter of Genesis.  This isn’t put on.  I walk downstairs to the lounge, and two boys are playing some fierce ping-pong, and other people are talking about old television comedies, and still others are chatting happily about some slippery point in philosophy.

There are two things we do plan, and it seems to me that other colleges are deliberate where they ought to be free, and free or apathetic where they ought to reason things out.

Our curriculum leaves little to chance or choice.  That is to say we have a curriculum, because we have a clear idea of what a person educated in the liberal arts should know.  We do not think that you get brains from a salad, a course in Victorian tailors here, a course in the New Orleans hurricane there, a course in elementary Spanish so that you can order a tequila in Tijuana, and a course in “gender and genocide,” so that you will want one.

He goes on to talk about how the absence of sexual libertinism is a major factor in that atmosphere in which real warmth, humanity, esprit de corps and interpersonal trust flourish.

And in the course of discussing a bit about how he wound up at Thomas More, quite contrary to his expectations for his career trajectory, he says this:

Not one good thing I have ever done or enjoyed in my life was the result of my foresight and determination.

It brought to mind today's devotional scripture, Proverbs 16:9:

A man’s heart plans his way,

But the Lord directs his steps. 

I often say 1990 was the most incredible year of my life. I went to Japan for two weeks, I went to the Soviet Union for two weeks, I went to San Francisco twice, Washington D.C. twice (where I attended a Pentagon briefing by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and a breakfast-briefing plea from the Saudi and Kuwaiti ambassadors to the US to do something about Iraq's belligerence) and met and married my wife, all while running a manufacturing company and maintaining a 4.0 GPA in pursuit of my master's degree in history. And I didn't initiate or orchestrate any of it. (Well, I was already enrolled in school and I'd had my job for a while.)

More refutation of the climate assessment released yesterday:

The usual suspects are touting the release of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (Volume II) yesterday. As far as I can tell it is the usual global warming rubbish recast in the name of “climate.” Matt Daily considers the political ramifications of the report in the Politico article “Trump’s dire climate report hands ammunition to Democrats.”

This is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Let’s turn over our resources and our freedoms to the Democratic Party and the administrative agencies in the service of their will to power.

Until Steve or John can take up the report, we will have to turn to Willis Eschenbach at WUWT. He extracts a few of the report highlights in “The froth of the Fourth” and cruelly subjects the hysterical allegations to empirical analysis: “After reading all of that, I got to wondering about the recent temperature history of the US. I went to NOAA’s Climate At A Glance, got their recent monthly data, and graphed it up, along with the dates of the four US National Climate Assessments.” The result is below.

I'll bet that was a dramatic scene when North Korea blew up the ten DMZ towers in the space of four minutes.  But let's hold off on any unicorns-and-rainbows hot takes:

Denuclearization of North Korea, more freedom for their people and a formal cessation of the Korean War are all admirable goals. But while you may grow tired of hearing me repeat myself, there’s something important to keep in mind here. Kim Jong-un is still a monster. He and his family have been directly responsible for the murder of tens, hundreds of thousands or even millions of their own citizens. They assassinate prominent military leaders and government officials with impunity while sending countless citizens to die in hidden work camps. His history shows that any promises he makes are valid only as long as they serve his purposes.

Kim has to be watched like a hawk. While much of this recent news is positive and encouraging, North Korea can still not be trusted.

Matthew Continetti at the Washington Free Beacon on why it ought to be a no-brainer for the US to grant Asia Bibi asylum. He begins with a refresher about who she is:

Asia Bibi got into an argument with her co-workers and ended up in jail. Bibi is a Pakistani Catholic and mother of five. She cannot read. For years, she picked fruit in her rural village. One day in June 2009, her peers refused to share a pitcher of water with her because she is a Christian. She argued with them, muttering some caustic words about the founder of Islam. They responded by accusing her of blasphemy: a capital crime in Pakistan. The next year she was sentenced to death row.

No longer. In October the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted and released Asia Bibi after a long legal battle, during which Islamic radicals assassinated a Pakistani official for supporting her cause. The response to her acquittal was unsurprising. Global media and human rights organizations cheered, while Pakistani fundamentalists demonstrated and hung Asia Bibi in effigy. The outrage spooked Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan into making it more difficult for her to leave the country. Facing the risk of extrajudicial killing, Bibi remains in hiding. Her lawyer Saiful Malook fled to Europe. Protests greeted his arrival.

And then offers the why:

Asia Bibi belongs in the United States. What better way to sustain America's history of religious freedom than to provide a home for this Catholic whose faith puts her life in danger? Not only would giving her shelter demonstrate our commitment to freedom, it also would highlight the differences between the United States and its sometimes-friend-sometimes-foe Pakistan. 

Great John Solomon piece at The Hill entitled "The Greatest Threat to American Journalism: The Loss of Neutral Reporting."

And let's wrap it up with a tweet yours truly posted a while ago:

Wayne Allen Root’s latest Townhall column is basically a public act of fellatio on Donald Trump. #cultworship

Now go fix some mulled cider and put on some Perry Como records.