Government in Exile

The Climate Change Illusion

From Fox News

For billions of human beings on the planet Earth, the "Just Stop Oil" and "Just Stop Fossil Fuels" movements really do equate to: just stop life. No matter what the seemingly entitled, rich-kid protesters may pretend to believe, the reality is billions of people the world over depend upon fossil fuels for their very survival. Period.  

Sadly — and quite dangerously — "climate change" has morphed from science to a religion for many on the left. Anyone questioning any aspect of the tenets of that newfound faith are branded heretics and excommunicated by the high priests of "green" energy.  

With the onset of COVID-19, we continually heard that "the science is settled" with regard to the virus, lockdowns, masking, school closures and mandated vaccines. Anyone daring to ask seemingly commonsense questions was labeled "anti-science" or an "anti-vaxxer." Even doctors in the field and parents simply worried about the welfare of their children. 

Now, as "climate change" is being used as a catch-all explanation for a growing number of issues on earth, some on the left are calling scientists who question the "evidence" and computer models — remember them as the drivers of the panic over COVID — "climate dissidents," "climate deniers" or worse. 

Two protesters pose after throwing canned soup at Vincent Van Gogh's famous 1888 work "Sunflowers" at the National Gallery in London on Oct. 14, 2022. (Just Stop Oil via AP)

Last month, as recently reported in Real Clear Investigations, more than 1,600 scientists, among them two Nobel physics laureates, Drs. John F. Clauser and Ivar Giaever of Norway, signed a declaration stating that there is no climate emergency, and that climate advocacy has devolved into mass hysteria.  

The skeptics say the radical transformation of entire societies is marching forth without a full debate, based on dubious scientific claims amplified by knee-jerk journalism. 

But for the high priests of Climate Change Religion, the education and real-world experience of these scientists seemingly does not matter. Much like the 1939 movie "The Wizard of Oz," many on the left are screaming: "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, pulling the levers that control the voice of the Great Oz. Listen only to the Great Oz." 

Today, the "Great Oz of Climate Change" does threaten to make life on earth dramatically worse for billions of people and no one is allowed to question his policies. 

Why? What are the "green energy" zealots so afraid of? The truth? 

No matter their refusal to debate, I still have a few questions for the Great Oz of Climate Change and his disciples: 

• Is the mad rush to "save the planet" more about panicking the public and politicians into ceding more and more control to the high priests of climate change — again, much like the induced panic surrounding COVID-19 — than it is about actual science?
• Are the Biden administration and the United Nations flat-out lying to us regarding how much of the land in the U.S. must be sacrificed to build "sustainable" solar and wind farms which often dramatically underperform?

 

• Are we talking about a few hundred thousand acres of land or are we really talking about tens of millions of acres to get to the fictional "net-zero" goal of halving U.S. carbon emissions by 2035 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050?
• What happens to the tens of millions of wildlife species which live and depend upon those millions of acres for survival? What happens to the farmland and our food supply? What happens to the massive batteries and the toxic waste they produce?
• What happens if — and when — nations such as China, Russia, India and others simply ignore the net-zero mandate? Wouldn’t that make the U.S. and every other nation who followed the policy "net-zero" chumps?
• For that reason, aren’t a number of nations that signed onto the "net-zero" goal now slow-walking or ignoring the policy because they believe it punishes their citizens of today?

Today, the "Great Oz of Climate Change" does threaten to make life on earth dramatically worse for billions of people and no one is allowed to question his policies. 

• Isn’t much of the frenzy surrounding climate change really just an elaborate excuse by some on the left to kill the fossil fuel industry no matter the real consequences for the billions of people and hundreds of thousands of employers who depend on fossil fuels for survival and to stay in business?

There are more questions which can be asked of the high priests of climate change, but then, that is precisely the point. They don’t want those questions asked. They don’t want debate. They don’t want investigations. 

They don’t care about your opinion.  

They simply want to turn off the main source of power for the planet Earth and ask you to trust them … or else. 

 

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The REAL Reason for Climate Change

The REAL reason for climate change is explained scientifically, for skeptics…

Milankovitch (Orbital) Cycles and Their Role in Earth's Climate

By Alan Buis,
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Our lives literally revolve around cycles: series of events that are repeated regularly in the same order. There are hundreds of different types of cycles in our world and in the universe. Some are natural, such as the change of the seasons, annual animal migrations or the circadian rhythms that govern our sleep patterns. Others are human-produced, like growing and harvesting crops, musical rhythms or economic cycles.

Cycles also play key roles in Earth’s short-term weather and long-term climate. A century ago, Serbian scientist Milutin Milankovitch hypothesized the long-term, collective effects of changes in Earth’s position relative to the Sun are a strong driver of Earth’s long-term climate, and are responsible for triggering the beginning and end of glaciation periods (Ice Ages).

Specifically, he examined how variations in three types of Earth orbital movements affect how much solar radiation (known as insolation) reaches the top of Earth’s atmosphere as well as where the insolation reaches. These cyclical orbital movements, which became known as the Milankovitch cycles, cause variations of up to 25 percent in the amount of incoming insolation at Earth’s mid-latitudes (the areas of our planet located between about 30 and 60 degrees north and south of the equator).

The Milankovitch cycles include:

1. The shape of Earth’s orbit, known as eccentricity;
2. The angle Earth’s axis is tilted with respect to Earth’s orbital plane, known as obliquity; and
3. The direction Earth’s axis of rotation is pointed, known as precession.
4. Eccentricity – Earth’s annual pilgrimage around the Sun isn’t perfectly circular, but it’s pretty close. Over time, the pull of gravity from our solar system’s two largest gas giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, causes the shape of Earth’s orbit to vary from nearly circular to slightly elliptical. Eccentricity measures how much the shape of Earth’s orbit departs from a perfect circle. These variations affect the distance between Earth and the Sun.

Eccentricity is the reason why our seasons are slightly different lengths, with summers in the Northern Hemisphere currently about 4.5 days longer than winters, and springs about three days longer than autumns. As eccentricity decreases, the length of our seasons gradually evens out.

The difference in the distance between Earth’s closest approach to the Sun (known as perihelion), which occurs on or about January 3 each year, and its farthest departure from the Sun (known as aphelion) on or about July 4, is currently about 5.1 million kilometers (about 3.2 million miles), a variation of 3.4 percent. That means each January, about 6.8 percent more incoming solar radiation reaches Earth than it does each July.

When Earth’s orbit is at its most elliptic, about 23 percent more incoming solar radiation reaches Earth at our planet’s closest approach to the Sun each year than does at its farthest departure from the Sun. Currently, Earth’s eccentricity is very slowly decreasing and is approaching its least elliptic (most circular), in a cycle that spans about 100,000 years.

Obliquity – The angle of Earth’s axis of rotation is tilted as it travels around the Sun is known as obliquity. Obliquity is why Earth has seasons. Over the last million years, it has varied between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees with respect to Earth’s orbital plane. The greater Earth’s axial tilt angle, the more extreme our seasons are, as each hemisphere receives more solar radiation during its summer, when the hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun, and less during winter, when it is tilted away. Larger tilt angles favor periods of deglaciation (the melting and retreat of glaciers and ice sheets). These effects aren’t uniform globally -- higher latitudes receive a larger change in total solar radiation than areas closer to the equator.

Earth’s axis is currently tilted 23.4 degrees, or about half way between its extremes, and this angle is very slowly decreasing in a cycle that spans about 41,000 years. It was last at its maximum tilt about 10,000 years ago and will reach its minimum tilt about 10,000 years from now. As obliquity decreases, it gradually helps make our seasons milder, resulting in increasingly warmer winters, and cooler summers that gradually, over time, allow snow and ice at high latitudes to build up into large ice sheets. As ice cover increases, it reflects more of the Sun’s energy back into space, promoting even further cooling.

 

 

 

 

California's Gavin Newsom Sues Oil Companies

"Peter" has some thoughts about Gavin Newsom.

Earth’s climate has changed from hot to ice and back to hot thousands of times over the last few billion years, long before the evolution of mankind. It is perhaps changing again. So what?

 

The State of California has filed suit against the oil industry, claiming that fossil fuels are causing climate change.

 

Their complaint presumes that mankind has the ability to change the climate and, therefore, the weather. Impossible!

 

Mother Nature decides the climate and the weather. Climate is affected by incremental changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun. A closer orbit creates a warmer climate. A more distant orbit creates an Ice Age. Nothing that mankind can do will alter this scientific fact. The climate will change, period.

 

Trying to make our oil industry responsible for climate change is not only fraudulent, it is an assault against one of the most important elements of our economy. Gavin Newsom is trying to take money, ultimately, from all Americans to benefit his constituents. His baseless suit is the epitome of phony law suits, relying on false assumptions and motivated by greed.

 

Shame on Gavin Newsom!

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The Real Problem in America

The Real Problem in America

I'm not sure who wrote this article, but it is an interesting perspective.

 Every Democrat presidential nominee since 1984 went to law school, although Gore did not graduate.  Joe Biden (no surprise) was at the bottom of his class.  Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school.  Barack Obama was a lawyer.  Michelle Obama was a lawyer.  Hillary Clinton was a lawyer.  Bill Clinton was a lawyer.  John Edwards is a lawyer.  Elizabeth Edwards was a lawyer.  Look at leaders of the Democrat Party in Congress: Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is a lawyer.  Former Senator Harry Reid was a lawyer

 The Republican Party is different.  President Trump was a businessman.  Presidents Bush 1 and 2 were businessmen.  Vice President Cheney was a businessman.  President Eisenhower was a 5 star General.  The leaders of the Republican Revolution: Newt Gingrich was a history professor.  Tom Delay was an exterminator.  Dick Armey was an economist.  Ex-House Minority Leader John Boehner was a plastics manufacturer.  The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon.  Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer?  Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against actor Ronald Reagan in 1976.  The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work, who are often the targets of lawyers. This is very interesting. I had never thought about it this way before.

 The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers.  Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Trump, Bush, and Cheney, or who heal the sick like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history like Gingrich.  The Lawyers Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America.  And so, in the eyes of the Lawyers Party, we have seen the procession of official enemies grow.  Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail?  Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers, and anyone producing anything of value in our nation.

 This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers.  Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, which, in this case should be the American people.  Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side.  Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine.  But it is an awful way to govern a great nation.

 When politicians, as lawyers, begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming.  Some Americans become adverse parties of our very government.  We are not all litigants in some vast social class-action suit.  We are citizens of a republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.

 Today, we are drowning in laws.  We are contorted by judicial decisions.  We are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives.  America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast, and unchecked.  When the most important decision for our next president is whom, he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big.  When House Democrats sue America to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to us, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.

 Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business.  Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work.  Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.

 The United States has 5% of the world's population and 66% of the world's lawyers!  Tort or legal reform legislation has been introduced in congress several times in the last several years to limit punitive damages in ridiculous lawsuits such as spilling hot coffee on yourself and suing the establishment that sold it to you and to limit punitive damages in huge medical malpractice lawsuits.  This legislation has been blocked from even being voted on by the Democrat Party.  When you see that 97% of the political contributions from the American Trial Lawyers Association go to the Democrat Party, then you realize who is responsible for our medical and product costs being so high.

 

Vivek Ramaswamy for President?

"Peter" has some thoughts about Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

Vivek Ramaswamy on the Mehdi Hassan Show Thursday, September 7, 2023:

Hassan: "You say you're anti-identity politics, anti-affirmative action in a party that hates the Soros name, yet you accepted a Paul and Daisy Soros scholarship at law school that was specifically set up for the children of immigrants," Hasan said. "It was an affirmative action scholarship, and your defense for that is that you didn't have the money to pay for law school even though you had already made over a million dollars at the time."

 

Ramaswamy: "I didn't say I didn't have the money; I said at a time when I had a lot less money than now, $50,000 was still useful," Ramaswamy said before Hasan spoke over him. Hasan said Ramaswamy keeps forgetting he said he "didn't have the money."

Ramaswamy had previously said he "didn't have the money" for Yale Law School after graduating from Harvard.

When a millionaire politician gets $50,000 from a Soros source, then lies about the circumstances, he’s dead to me.

 

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