With the mid-term elections less than a month away, Americans grumbling about inflation and more expensive everything, and the left-spinmeisters’ "All Is Well" bleats falling on deaf ears, Biden and his handlers naturally reacted with great outrage and high dudgeon at OPEC's announced plan to curtail production by 2 million barrels a day.
I'll never understand people who believe in this rush to green energy. I put them into 3 categories. Either they are incredibly stupid, or so gullible as to be untrustworthy, or they willfully want to destroy the country. None of those are good. I'm all for getting to a clean but reliable energy, but it has to happen strategically and with a purpose, and not cause so much damage in the meantime. I equate it to being on a cliff and wanting to go down to the beach below. You can take the quick way and jump off the cliff, but you'll kill yourself in the process. And don't forget to pat yourself on the back on the way down.
I think "ignorant" is more apt than "stupid," with the real sin being arrogance. They've been sold on the global warming catastrophe narrative, and they see that the loudest skepticism comes from those who are their political opposites, so they translate it into "the other side is wrong and stupid, so it's obviously wrong and stupid on this issue, therefore we don't need to actually think about or dig into our own policies."
As usual you are able to articulate it better than I can. Your point is what bothers me the most about the issue. I've never thought of climate change as a political issue because it really isn't. If people could remove that aspect and just use critical thinking skills they might view it differently. There's two questions that the indoctrinated are never able to answer. One is that science tells us that the planet has been a LOT hotter than it is now, as well as a LOT cooler, all before man could ever have had an impact. So why assume something that has happened organically during the course of time all of a sudden become man's doing? (I know why) The second question is, what is the ideal climate? I mean, if we're going to try and affect the climate (as if we could) then what are we shooting for?
It's good to separate the climate change thing into several pieces.
First, there's whether human carbon emissions are causing measurable changes in global temps.
Second is the matter of whether such changes warrant action - whether they're good, bad, or of little matter - and if bad, *how* bad.
Third is whether the current slate of actions would remedy human-caused changes.
Fourth, whether the cost of those changes is warranted.
Not too many people who read the material dispute that Q1 is yes - that some amount of the change we witness is produced by human emissions. That doesn't make the change a Bad Thing, nor does it mean that ALL the change is anthropogenic. It's not a call to action, it's not proof of crisis. It shouldn't be what we question when we debate policy.
Even in the case of the second question - which is where there's real reason to challenge the catastrophic orthodoxy - is secondary to the modern debate, for I fully believe that even if we were to accept the more dire predictions, what's being done is utterly wrong.
In other words, it's more effective to challenge the greens on their policies than on the predictions, no matter that the predictions have been consistently wrong on the high side for decades. What's being done is utterly pointless if the goal is to slow carbon emissions. Neither the math nor the politics of large-scale wind and solar adds up, not without a major tech breakthrough. Even those who believe the catastrophic predictions can be shown this reality, if they can be caught in a moment of intellectual openness.
The problem is that openness. It became a litmus-test political position, like abortion or gun control, somewhere along the way, and I believe that this is the case because it was seen by many as an opportunity to impose central controls on economies. Many more see it as a reason to hate their fellow citizens - something that people always seem to want. So, the true believers on the Left are *very* hard to talk into a softer position... though I'm seeing more acceptance of nuclear power by the less fanatical.
In short, focus on the impossibility of the proposed remedy, rather than on questioning the severity of the problem, when talking to the green-inclined.
Although I very much agree with your overall take, I'm enough of a sticker to argue with one of your other takes -- your discussion about Germany, Gerhard Schröder, and Angela Merkel. Germany is a multi-party state generally run by coalition governments, and Schröder's government was formed in 1998 as a coalition between his party (the Socialists) and the Greens, whose rise (and much of the European climate hysteria) was fueled by the snowless Alpine winter of 1992-93. (In the 1994 German federal elections, the Greens (Alliance 90) jumped from an 8-seat 5th place party to a 49-seat 3rd place party, and that trend continued.) Schröder's second term, with a super-narrow 9-vote majority, was entirely due to Green support. And after Schröder's party finished second in the 2005 election to Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU, the Greens refused to enter a coalition that didn't include Schröder (which ended up forcing a "grand coalition" between Merkel's CDU/CSU and Schröder's SDP, under which most SDP policies had to be continued). So the Greens were strongly behind Schröder's support for the Nord Stream project, and Merkel wasn't in a position to kill it when she came in, because her alliance depended on the SDP.
Now, once Merkel took over, Schröder took a position at Nord Stream, and he benefitted greatly financially from that post -- and from his willful blindness toward Putin. Whether he is more of a Quisling than Tucker Carlson is an open question. But the choice to put Germany in that position was almost entirely made by the Greens themselves, not by Schröder.
As for Merkel, she saw an opportunity to use Nord Stream to revive a former Baltic Sea resort town in her elected Bundestag district: Greifswald. Because of the way that the Allies divided Pomerania between Germany and Poland at the end of WWII, Greifswald was close to the Polish border -- and in the "Ostzone" period, the Soviets constructed cheap, ugly "Socialist housing" that destroyed the historic appeal of the ancient Hanseatic League port city. Merkel was able to get the Nord Stream project to revitalize the town, by removing most of the Soviet-era buildings and adding the pipeline and housing facilities needed for the project . . . and the presence of workers with money drove redevelopment of the Hanseatic League historic buildings.
One thing we can't forget about Merkel is that, as a former East German resident who speaks Russian fluently, she was never going to share the same viewpoint about Putin as the West Germans did, and as a Ph.D. in physics, she also would need more evidence to reach conclusions, including about Putin's long-term intentions. I have little doubt that Merkel, unlike Schröder, was well aware of the risks that the dependence on Russian pipelines could pose -- but I doubt that she -- or, frankly, anyone in Western Europe -- anticipated that someone who had already stolen as much money as "Vladolf" would put everything on the line for so little gain -- and then double down when his first efforts failed in six weeks.
One more point: the current German government, which replaced Merkel in 2021, is another SPD-Greens coalition (this time with the Free Democrats as well), which may actually have influenced Putin's Ukraine aggression, since the Greens' head, Annalena Baerbock (no umlaut!), became the German Foreign Minister in the new government. However, Baerbock appears to have learned from the mistakes of the past, because she recently acknowledged that "Germany did not listen carefully enough to the right assessment of many partners with regard to Russia." In fact, she's been the German government minister who is most opposed to accommodating Russia and most supportive of Ukraine. (Internal German politics never ceases to fascinate!)
Unfortunately, idiots keep electing these idiots.
Well done, Peter. Thoughtful with a splash of humor. You are my kind of a guy.
I'll never understand people who believe in this rush to green energy. I put them into 3 categories. Either they are incredibly stupid, or so gullible as to be untrustworthy, or they willfully want to destroy the country. None of those are good. I'm all for getting to a clean but reliable energy, but it has to happen strategically and with a purpose, and not cause so much damage in the meantime. I equate it to being on a cliff and wanting to go down to the beach below. You can take the quick way and jump off the cliff, but you'll kill yourself in the process. And don't forget to pat yourself on the back on the way down.
I think "ignorant" is more apt than "stupid," with the real sin being arrogance. They've been sold on the global warming catastrophe narrative, and they see that the loudest skepticism comes from those who are their political opposites, so they translate it into "the other side is wrong and stupid, so it's obviously wrong and stupid on this issue, therefore we don't need to actually think about or dig into our own policies."
As usual you are able to articulate it better than I can. Your point is what bothers me the most about the issue. I've never thought of climate change as a political issue because it really isn't. If people could remove that aspect and just use critical thinking skills they might view it differently. There's two questions that the indoctrinated are never able to answer. One is that science tells us that the planet has been a LOT hotter than it is now, as well as a LOT cooler, all before man could ever have had an impact. So why assume something that has happened organically during the course of time all of a sudden become man's doing? (I know why) The second question is, what is the ideal climate? I mean, if we're going to try and affect the climate (as if we could) then what are we shooting for?
It's good to separate the climate change thing into several pieces.
First, there's whether human carbon emissions are causing measurable changes in global temps.
Second is the matter of whether such changes warrant action - whether they're good, bad, or of little matter - and if bad, *how* bad.
Third is whether the current slate of actions would remedy human-caused changes.
Fourth, whether the cost of those changes is warranted.
Not too many people who read the material dispute that Q1 is yes - that some amount of the change we witness is produced by human emissions. That doesn't make the change a Bad Thing, nor does it mean that ALL the change is anthropogenic. It's not a call to action, it's not proof of crisis. It shouldn't be what we question when we debate policy.
Even in the case of the second question - which is where there's real reason to challenge the catastrophic orthodoxy - is secondary to the modern debate, for I fully believe that even if we were to accept the more dire predictions, what's being done is utterly wrong.
In other words, it's more effective to challenge the greens on their policies than on the predictions, no matter that the predictions have been consistently wrong on the high side for decades. What's being done is utterly pointless if the goal is to slow carbon emissions. Neither the math nor the politics of large-scale wind and solar adds up, not without a major tech breakthrough. Even those who believe the catastrophic predictions can be shown this reality, if they can be caught in a moment of intellectual openness.
The problem is that openness. It became a litmus-test political position, like abortion or gun control, somewhere along the way, and I believe that this is the case because it was seen by many as an opportunity to impose central controls on economies. Many more see it as a reason to hate their fellow citizens - something that people always seem to want. So, the true believers on the Left are *very* hard to talk into a softer position... though I'm seeing more acceptance of nuclear power by the less fanatical.
In short, focus on the impossibility of the proposed remedy, rather than on questioning the severity of the problem, when talking to the green-inclined.
Although I very much agree with your overall take, I'm enough of a sticker to argue with one of your other takes -- your discussion about Germany, Gerhard Schröder, and Angela Merkel. Germany is a multi-party state generally run by coalition governments, and Schröder's government was formed in 1998 as a coalition between his party (the Socialists) and the Greens, whose rise (and much of the European climate hysteria) was fueled by the snowless Alpine winter of 1992-93. (In the 1994 German federal elections, the Greens (Alliance 90) jumped from an 8-seat 5th place party to a 49-seat 3rd place party, and that trend continued.) Schröder's second term, with a super-narrow 9-vote majority, was entirely due to Green support. And after Schröder's party finished second in the 2005 election to Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU, the Greens refused to enter a coalition that didn't include Schröder (which ended up forcing a "grand coalition" between Merkel's CDU/CSU and Schröder's SDP, under which most SDP policies had to be continued). So the Greens were strongly behind Schröder's support for the Nord Stream project, and Merkel wasn't in a position to kill it when she came in, because her alliance depended on the SDP.
Now, once Merkel took over, Schröder took a position at Nord Stream, and he benefitted greatly financially from that post -- and from his willful blindness toward Putin. Whether he is more of a Quisling than Tucker Carlson is an open question. But the choice to put Germany in that position was almost entirely made by the Greens themselves, not by Schröder.
As for Merkel, she saw an opportunity to use Nord Stream to revive a former Baltic Sea resort town in her elected Bundestag district: Greifswald. Because of the way that the Allies divided Pomerania between Germany and Poland at the end of WWII, Greifswald was close to the Polish border -- and in the "Ostzone" period, the Soviets constructed cheap, ugly "Socialist housing" that destroyed the historic appeal of the ancient Hanseatic League port city. Merkel was able to get the Nord Stream project to revitalize the town, by removing most of the Soviet-era buildings and adding the pipeline and housing facilities needed for the project . . . and the presence of workers with money drove redevelopment of the Hanseatic League historic buildings.
One thing we can't forget about Merkel is that, as a former East German resident who speaks Russian fluently, she was never going to share the same viewpoint about Putin as the West Germans did, and as a Ph.D. in physics, she also would need more evidence to reach conclusions, including about Putin's long-term intentions. I have little doubt that Merkel, unlike Schröder, was well aware of the risks that the dependence on Russian pipelines could pose -- but I doubt that she -- or, frankly, anyone in Western Europe -- anticipated that someone who had already stolen as much money as "Vladolf" would put everything on the line for so little gain -- and then double down when his first efforts failed in six weeks.
One more point: the current German government, which replaced Merkel in 2021, is another SPD-Greens coalition (this time with the Free Democrats as well), which may actually have influenced Putin's Ukraine aggression, since the Greens' head, Annalena Baerbock (no umlaut!), became the German Foreign Minister in the new government. However, Baerbock appears to have learned from the mistakes of the past, because she recently acknowledged that "Germany did not listen carefully enough to the right assessment of many partners with regard to Russia." In fact, she's been the German government minister who is most opposed to accommodating Russia and most supportive of Ukraine. (Internal German politics never ceases to fascinate!)
I get it and I agree. Certainly, no one person sets a nation's entire policy, unless the policy is already heading in that direction.
That said, the "make the nation a hostage" is inexcusable.