The Counterattack of Reason
For some time, optimists like me have had to work hard to keep believing that reason will prevail. I now think, as reality sets in, my faith in reason, though too long delayed, is not unwarranted. This week is, I think, the beginning of the end for some nutty thinking and policies.
Climate Change
I’ve always believed that destroying the world’s economies and impoverishing poor people around the globe in a narcissistic belief that man can control the climate was lunacy. More research revealed every week justifies my belief that this war on reliable, plentiful fossil fuels has been pure hokum. This week, the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) took a major hit to its credibility.
The credibility of the disaster-addicted Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been dealt a damaging blow with recently-published research showing that 42% of its climate scenarios rely on improbable rises in future temperature that even the UN-funded body believes are of “low likelihood”. The research notes the IPCC admission of improbability is “deeply buried” in the full Sixth Assessment Reports (AR6), and is “unlikely to be read by the policy makers”. The authors note that significant and important sections of the full IPCC work emphasise these improbable claims, “potentially invalidating those sections of the report”.
Climate and emissions outline SSP5-8.5 assumes a rise of around 5°C by the end of the century. It was always somewhat detached from reality and has long been dealt a death blow, given that global warming ran out of steam about 25 years ago. [snip] Leaving aside the small natural boost from a very powerful EL Niño oscillation around 2016, warming is little more than 0.1°C over two decades. Nevertheless, SSP5-8.5 gives credence to 42% of the IPCC’s work in AR6. [snip]
The authors are damning about much of the IPCC’s work. In addition to emphasising worst-case scenarios, it rewrites climate history, has a “huge bias” in favour of bad news against good news, and keeps the good news out of its widely-distributed Summary for Policymakers (SPM). One notable contradiction surrounds flooding, where the AR6 IPCC report states with “low confidence” that humans have contributed to it, yet the Summary for Policymakers promotes the opposite, stating that human influence has increased “compound” flooding.
With reality contradicting hype, claims for climate reparations -- actually, stealing from better-functioning countries to pay worse ones -- should die. Of course, there are still many people who are profiting from this hype:
All through history, there have been future foretellers -- prophets. The IPCC is simply a 21st-century prophet. They believe that they can predict the temperature in one hundred years' time with 0.1-degree accuracy, and like Scientology, they have many faithful disciples.
Reparations
The nonsensical notion fanned by California’s Governor Gavin Newsom for votes that a state which never had slavery should compel those who never owned slaves to pay those who never were slaves, seems to have hit the rocks of reality. The reparations panel he installed to look into this was endorsing payments as high as $1.2 million for every black California resident. At this point, looking at a huge budget deficit, not incidentally due to the Democrat mismanagement of his state, Newsom blinked. It was reported that he denied he meant “cash reparations” and then, in the face of blowback from disappointed grifters, his spokesman denied that he meant what had been reported.
Newsom had said in a media statement that “dealing with the legacy of slavery is about much more than cash payments.”
A spokesperson for Newsom clarified his comments in an email statement to The Bee.
“The sensationalized framing in pieces published by outlets like Fox News and others is inaccurate. The Governor looks forward to reviewing the final report -- and all recommendations -- when complete.”
Newsom’s chief communication advisor Anthony York said that Newsom is not backing away from cash payments, but wants to wait for the report in its entirety to arrive on his desk before he makes any decision.
Sure. He is now on the hot seat having raised expectations of grifters he can never meet, and is tap dancing like crazy to avoid the consequences. In the meantime, he’s using a surrogate in an effort to ease him off the hotseat.
California Democratic state Sen. Steven Bradford is warning African Americans not to get their “hopes up” for massive reparations payments from the state.
Bradford’s message comes after the California Reparations Task Force recommended over the weekend that the state pay up to $1.2 million in reparations to each eligible Black resident.
The state lawmaker, who served on the task force, claimed that it’s possible that Black residents could receive cash payments “if the money’s there,” but argued that receiving million dollar checks in repayment for historical discrimination is “not happening.”
If I’m wrong, everyone can move to California and “identify” as black since we all know that like sex, race and even species are simply social constructs and we can identify as anything that we want.
Sanctuary Cities
As Biden’s open-border policies have allowed in without tracking millions of illegal aliens, governors of the most affected states have started shipping them north to cities where Democrat politicians have long signaled their virtue by declaring themselves sanctuary cities. Now they are claiming these relatively small numbers of immigrants are more than they can handle. The reliably leftist Politico reports “New York is being destroyed by the migrant crisis.” David Burge (the Great Iowahawk) responds
Only huge economic powerhouse cities like Laredo or Brownsville have the resources to handle this
10,000 migrants living on Juarez Street in El Paso: Do better, El Paso 100 migrants show up on a bus in Manhattan: the biggest crisis in New York history
Now New York City is shipping some of the flood upstate to communities that are expected to house them.
Several Democrat senators (Sherrod Brown, Joe Manchin, John Tester, Kyrsten Sinema) are joining Republicans in supporting SB 1473, which will "authorize the immediate expulsion of inadmissible aliens attempting to enter the United States by fraud or without a necessary entry document, and for other purposes," which, in essence, is extending Title 42. This was a statute from 2020 that prohibited asylum-seekers from entering the country due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In Chicago, black voters are outraged by the plan to house these illegals in the South side of the city, bumping them off city housing lists.
In the meantime, a District Court judge in Florida has temporarily blocked the open-door policy of the administration.
DEI Corruption of Education
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are means of destroying meritocracy and Republican majority state legislatures are finally responding. A number of states are now demanding to know how much money is being spent on DEI programs. Once voters realize how much money has been spent on this pernicious nonsense, it is likely to be scrapped.
In Wisconsin, the legislature flexed its muscles and demanded the state university stop requiring DEI statements of job applicants. It’s a start. Next, they should detail for voters how much is spent for administrators and programs designed to propagate this. Faced with ever-increasing tuition fees, a great deal of which is going not to teaching but to administering DEI idiocy, the voters will rebel against it. In related news about the backlash against the war on meritocracy, the ABA has retreated from eliminating the LSAT from law-school admissions. It’s likely that race and ethnic identification qualifiers for medical school will soon be dealt with by a Supreme Court hostile to such policies.
The Counterattack of Reason - American Thinker
