November 19, 2021

When The Costs Hit Home, Nobody Will Give Up Fossil Fuels

November 19, 2021/ Francis Menton

As noted in my post this past Sunday, no amount of fake happy talk in the so-called “Glasgow Climate Pact” can obscure the obvious fact that nobody agreed to anything.
To read the text of the “pact,” everybody claims to think that this whole “decarbonization” thing to “save the planet” is real. We’re all going to do something really, really significant, but it will be next year, or maybe the year after that.
And meanwhile, nobody has made any remotely serious effort to cost this thing out. Are we talking about a ten percent increase in the cost of energy for this decarbonization project, or will it be a doubling, or maybe a tripling — or maybe even a multiplication by ten?
With tens of trillions of dollars at stake in the world economy, let alone the majority of humanity at risk of energy poverty, you would think that we would be far down the road toward detailed engineering studies of what the decarbonized energy world will look like and exactly how much it will cost. But it is exactly the opposite.

November 16, 2021

If You Read It In The Mainstream Media, It's Wrong -- Plastics Edition

November 16, 2021/ Francis Menton

By now you must have noticed how many of the big news stories that have political significance to the left, and are hyped for months or years (or even decades) on end throughout the mainstream media, turn out to be false.
Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to hack and steal the 2016 election. Kyle Rittenhouse is a white supremacist vigilante who went to Kenosha to make trouble. There is no such thing as Critical Race Theory taught in K-12 schools. “Climate change” is an existential crisis that can be easily solved at little cost by building wind turbines and solar panels. Saturated fat in your diet is bad for you. Feel free to add your own ten or a hundred examples to this list.
One that I had paid little attention to up to now was the narrative about the evils of plastics — that they cause terrible pollution problems, that they have accumulated in vast amounts in the oceans, that they kill sea creatures by the millions, that they accumulate forever and never degrade, and so forth.
While I haven’t been paying attention, this narrative, like so many others, has swept to universal acceptance in progressive precincts, which of course includes my own New York City.
So clearly, there must be something really horrible about these plastic bags and straws, and probably everything else made of plastic.

November 14, 2021

November 14, 2021/ Francis Menton

If you have been following the news at all for the past several weeks, you know that the latest gigantic UN “climate” conference, going by the name COP (Conference of Parties) 26, has been taking place in Glasgow, Scotland. Mercifully, it ended yesterday, Saturday, November 13. All of those hundreds of private jets have now flown home.
Every time one of these UN confabs takes place, you have to hold your breath fearing that some tremendously damaging result will emerge. But, reviewing the final outcome of this latest conference, my comment is that we climate realists have gotten about the best result we could have hoped for. If you read some mainstream news sources, you may well get exactly the opposite impression. So let me give my reasoning.
At this point, there are basically two paths that the world might take in the movement toward so-called “decarbonization” of the energy system. . . .

November 12, 2021

November 12, 2021/ Francis Menton

Over the years, mostly in connection with the Trump/Russia collusion hoax, I have had many occasions to cover what I have considered to be wrongful — indeed clearly criminal — conduct by the FBI. To give just a few examples, there was the 2016 application for a FISA warrant against Carter Page (three times renewed) based on knowingly false information; the 2017 set-up of Michael Flynn; and then-Director Comey’s blatant lies to President Trump in early 2017 about what the FBI was up to. Or go to this link for a long litany of wrongful FBI and DOJ conduct.
So with all that has now come out about the FBI’s sordid and criminal role in the Trump/Russia matter, do you think that the people at the Bureau would be at least a little chastened? Don’t be ridiculous. Indeed, they have every reason to have learned the opposite lesson.
And so now, over the past few days, we learn about another round of blatant and egregious FBI misconduct. This time the target is not an opposing political campaign, but it is nevertheless a clear political enemy, namely Project Veritas and its head, James O’Keefe.

November 09, 2021

November 09, 2021/ Francis Menton

It seems that no American institution is immune to the phenomenon.
You have some organization out there that for all you know is just a regular and sensible group of professionals. You don’t pay much attention to what they are up to because, after all, you have your own life to lead.
Then one day, for whatever reason, you have occasion to take a look at their latest utterances. And immediately it hits you — Holy Shit!, the Body Snatchers have gotten them too. The people involved seem by their physical appearance to be nearly unchanged, but they have developed a glassy-eyed stare, and out of their mouths come nothing but mindless catchphrases about “systemic racism,” “oppression,” “marginalized peoples,” and “white privilege.”
I ran across the November 3 piece by Christine Rosen in Commentary titled “Critical Race Theory Is Coming for Your Doctor.” Rosen’s article dissects a new document just out (October 28) from the AMA, with the title “Advancing Health Equity: A Guide To Language, Narrative, and Concepts.”
A fair summary of “Advancing Health Equity” would be that if you just stumbled across it at random, you would be sure that it is a parody.

November 06, 2021

November 06, 2021/ Jane Menton

No one wants to live through a pandemic.
But for those who don’t have a choice, there is a silver lining: pandemics have historically brought about periods of social disruption that have had positive outcomes for the following generations.
There are reasons to be optimistic that we will experience some of that today.