RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/more-fracking-or-more-war/

It’s our choice.

Here is a news lead that begins with a bang and ends with a whimper: “The strike on the heartland of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, including damage to the world’s biggest petroleum-processing facility, has driven oil prices to their highest level in” — here, Reuters should have used some ellipses of irony — “nearly four months.”

Four months!

If the United States declines to go to war against Iran on behalf of Saudi Arabia, our increasingly troublesome client state, one of the reasons for that happy development will be: because we do not need to. It is no longer the case that the world sneezes when the Saudis catch a cold. U.S. interests and Saudi interests remain aligned, broadly, but they are severable.

The high-tech method of mining shale formations for oil and gas colloquially known as “fracking” — though hydraulic fracturing is only a part of it — has been a game-changer for more than one game. While countries such as Germany set headline-grabbing, politics-driven carbon-reduction targets only to woefully fail to achieve them (it is very difficult to greenwash 170 million tons of brown coal), the United States has been relatively successful on that front, reducing energy-related carbon emissions by 14 percent from 2005 to 2017, thanks to natural gas; put another way, fracking has helped the United States to what climate activists ought to consider one of its greatest environmental victories.

amgreatness.com/2019/09/20/the-climate-cults-new-theology-is-a-poisonous-proposition/

Gertrude Stein mused, “a rose is a rose is a rose . . . ” Unless, of course, it is your Grand Inquisitor.

In the latest evidence the Left is regressing into a permanent vegetative state, the Union Theological Seminary (UTS) in New York City hosted “a beautiful ritual” to help combat climate change: “Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor. What do you confess to the plants in your life?”

The UTS unraveled the rationale behind their beautiful ritual in a sacred Twitter thread. In sum, religions that believed God gave humanity dominion over the earth have advanced the climate change crisis by encouraging generations to . . . exercise dominion over the earth. The seminary’s solution is to “birth new theology, new liturgy to heal and sow, replacing ones that reap and destroy.” Ergo, the root of their “new theology” is to place humanity on the level of plants as both peers and penitents. “What’s different (and the source of so much derision) is that we’re treating plants as fully created beings, divine Creation in its own right—not just something to be consumed.”

(As an aside: the Left’s menu of approved items we can consume is getting rather limited, since the climate cult claims the “crisis” is aided and abetted by eating meat—human meat excepted, of course. And now, if plants are my peers—or superior beings—can I have rice as a side dish with my porpoise free tuna? Can I even have a tuna salad sandwich? Perhaps, this is the Malthusian climate cult’s plan all along, because they hold people to be the reason for climate change? Less food; fewer people; less climate change—and with less than 12 years to accomplish all this!)

Here, we see the UTS realizes the beautiful ritual where people confessin’ the blues, sins, or anything else to a plant may, like broccoli, have its detractors. Yet, they remain undeterred: “And here’s the thing: At first, this work will seem weird. It won’t feel normal. It won’t look like how we’re used to worship looking and sounding.”

True enough. I’m not, nor have I ever been, an earth worshipping pagan (despite having listened to Led Zeppelin). Further, I don’t consider making what’s old (an earth-worshipping cult) new again (the climate-change cult) remotely miraculous, except maybe as a matter of marketing and as an indictment of the postmodernist mind. 

Still, in bad news for Ted Turner, the UTS potential to finally turn the term “humanist” into an exclusionary epithet for those who hold people superior to plants and animals in the natural order could constitute a minor miracle within the Left’s abominable cancel culture. Regardless, just because something is new and different doesn’t mean it can’t be stupid and pointless; and sometimes weird is just weird; and some “extractivism” deserves derision and—

https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/19/child-hostages-obey-their-climate-captors/

The emotional, physical, and intellectual damage wrought by the climate change movement now is coming into clear view. It’s an outcome that should enrage every parent.

On Friday, schoolchildren around the world will be prompted to walk out of class as part of the “Global Climate Strike.” These young “climate strikers” will protest alleged inaction on climate change and promote an end to fossil fuel use.

“Our house is on fire—let’s act like it. We demand climate justice for everyone,” the event’s website warns.

It is the latest stunt orchestrated by the international climate cabal and yet another example of how the Left shamelessly exploits and manipulates children to propagandize any cause. (Think of the high school students in Parkland, Florida.) But this time, the climate cabal is using a special-needs teenager from Sweden to indoctrinate more children and adults with climate change dogma.

Greta Thunberg is a 16-year-old from Stockholm—which is ironic because the teen exhibits many traits associated with a hostage attempting to please her captors.

In a way, Thunberg is not the face of a climate crisis but an alarming example of how the climate cabal has needlessly terrified two generations of young people. The emotional, physical, and intellectual damage wrought by the climate change movement now is coming into clear view and it’s an outcome that should enrage every parent.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/climate-change-faith-nbc-solicits-climate-confessions/

We are religious creatures. The desire to worship — something, anything — persists, even as our objects of veneration change. That religious impulse can be led easily astray in an age where traditional religious institutions appear impotent, unwilling to defend their claims against the rising tides of universalism and ecumenism. If you’re not careful, you’ll worship something unfit for your devotion. Worse, you might end up confessing your sins to NBC News.

As a certain type of person found themselves doing yesterday.

The network announced that it is soliciting “climate confessions,” admissions of public and private sins against the natural environment and the climate.  The sacrament, far from the ornate wooden lairs of Catholic lore, occurs on one sordidly animated webpage, where your transgressions against Gaea are plastered for all to see, in a communal ritual of denunciation. Atop the site is a promise to uphold the seal of the confessional, assuring penitents that their “confessions” will be kept anonymous.

“Tell us,” NBC insists with ecclesial verve, “Where do you fall short in preventing climate change?” It even provides an examination of conscience in miniature: “Do you blast the A/C? Throw out half your lunch? Grill a steak every week?”

Contrite sinners were all too happy to admit their faults: “I compost at home, but not at work,” reads the confession of one offender; “I want to install solar panels but am waiting for state/federal incentives to do so!” grieves another. Like any good religion, there were apostates; one heretic nailed this to the digital door: “I run my AC 24/7. I’m not going to sweat to appease this climate religion.” Another wrote, “I eat meat every day. And won’t stop, because it’s good.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-idolatry-of-environmental-extremism/

A bizarre incident at Union Theological Seminary illustrates why many Christians believe that internal forces, not external ones, represent the greatest threat to the church.

Students at this seminary prayed to a collection of plants in its chapel, which triggered a raft of criticism on Twitter. The school defiantly defended its action in a series of tweets.

“Today in chapel, we confessed to plants,” the school tweeted. “Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor. What do you confess to the plants in your life?”

Some Twitter respondents observed that the seminary and its students have lost their minds, but I think it’s worse than that. Insanity might mitigate this sacrilege, but deliberately perverting theology is another matter.

Pastor Greg Locke tweeted, “This is utter nonsense. Absolute theological bankruptcy in every way. Your Seminary is a cemetery.” Another Twitter user quipped, “What kind of penance did the plants give after the ‘confession?'”

What possesses this misguided institution to refer to plants as “beings”? What gross theological error leads them to pray to and encourage others to pray to them? Idolatry is no trifling matter, which is underscored by at least two of the Ten Commandments and the entirety of Scripture.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/09/relax-weve-

“God forbid we have a real global crisis to deal with. Either we won’t believe it after suffering this present hoax or we’ll think that the equivalent of building some windmills will solve it. What global warming / climate change/ climate emergency (choose your favourite) has shown is that large sections of humankind are susceptible to hysterias promoted by elitists; and that governments are singularly incapable of acting resolutely to combat crises to which they say they subscribe. ”

A friend of mine, Geoff Hogbin (Free to Shop, CIS, 1983), made an incisive throwaway comment some time back which has stuck with me. How would the climate models do he said, sceptically, if they were required to perform across data from the end of the Industrial Revolution; from say the mid-nineteenth century. Of course, there is a data problem. Or I imagine that there is.

The official atmospheric concentration of CO2 measured at Mount Mauna Loa in Hawaii goes back only to 1958. HADCRUT temperature data on a global scale goes back to 1850 but you have to ask how consistent are the temperatures recorded in the 1850s with those in the last ten, twenty and fifty years? Satellite temperature data which is probably more reliable than land and ocean-based measures only goes back to the end of 1978.

If it were possible, I would like to see the climate models applied to separate sub-periods, at least back to 1850, to see how they perform. I will guess. They wouldn’t do too well. But my prejudice is showing.

When, four decades ago, I dabbled in econometrics, an important test of a model calculated over a whole data series was to see how it performed using only the first half of the data set and then separately the second half. Was it good for all seasons? Usually it wasn’t. Conclusion: throw it away and begin again.

Almost all of the climate models have over-predicted global temperatures. Or, again, I think that they have. It is easy to find commentaries which say that they have a pretty good record overall, as it is to find the opposite. Hard for us ordinary punters to get a handle on it.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/17/the-global-warming-scare-the-perfect-trojan-horse-for-tyranny/

If anyone doubts the reality of that headline, they either didn’t see the Democrats’ climate townhall, or they need to go back and watch it with an open mind. The alarmists’ objective, which fits perfectly with leftist and progressive politics, is to put themselves in charge of the world.

CNN’s climate townhall, a slog that lasted seven grueling hours, was a prohibition-fest. The candidates suggested banning nuclear energy, fracking, offshore drilling, conventional automobiles, all fossil fuels, even red meat, plastic straws, and babies. It devolved into a contest to see which Democratic presidential aspirant could propose the greatest volume of proscriptions.

And for what? Is our ever-changing climate an existential threat? Hardly. A slightly warmer planet “is not going to be the end of the world,” says Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.

“The world is just becoming more challenging,” he told a Finnish magazine earlier this month. “In parts of the globe, living conditions are becoming worse, but people have survived in harsh conditions.”

While he’s neither a denier nor skeptic — he is probably best described as a “lukewarmer” — Taalas says he’s concerned about the fanatic elements that are even attacking the “climate experts” who are promoting the man-made global warming narrative. They, he says, “claim that we should be much more radical.” 

“They are doomsters and extremists; they make threats,” he said.

Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore tweeted that Taalas’ statement is “biggest crack in the alarmist narrative for a long time.”

“The meteorologists are real scientists and probably fed up with Gr

https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/12/no-conservatives-shouldnt-make-environmental-policy-a-priority-now/

Americans finally are getting a close look at what a future controlled by climate freaks would really look like—and they are justifiably alarmed.

As I wrote earlier this week, the Democratic Party is accomplishing what the Republican Party—conservatives in particular—failed to do for more than two decades: Exposing the general public to the radical, authoritarian, and wholly unrealistic agenda lurking behind the facade of the climate change movement.

The Green New Deal betrayed the climate crusade’s outlandish demands in its starkest, darkest terms yet, and a seven-hour climate change “town hall” on CNN this month featured Democratic presidential hopefuls promising everything from abortion and plastic straw bans to government-ordered veganism as solutions to halt supposed climate change. Democratic candidates promise to become more dystopian on this issue as they head into the heart of the 2020 campaign season.

So, presented with this gift, it is no time for Republicans and conservatives to take the boot off the throat of the collective climate propaganda machine.

That’s why I have a quibble with my publisher and pal, Chris Buskirk, over his recent missive encouraging conservatives to put environmental policy toward the top of our to-do list: “We’ve avoided making the environment a political priority for decades and the country is worse for it,” Buskirk wrote. “Conservatives should embrace this issue. It’s a chance to do good and to do well.”

In another time, I might partially agree with Buskirk’s sentiment. But not at this political moment.

 http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/23198/the-humanitarian-hoax-of-climate-change-ii

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com

http://lindagoudsmit.com

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

The humanitarian hoax of climate change is so enormous and far-reaching that one article on the subject is simply not enough.

My first article, The Humanitarian Hoax of Climate Change: Killing America With Kindness – hoax 4, was published two years ago on 7.21.2017. The second, The Riddle of Climate Change, published on 2.27.19 continued the discussion. Now it is necessary to explore the ever-expanding climate change hoax and examine the progress the hucksters have made in advance of the pivotal 2020 elections.

Let’s begin with huckster-in-chief Barack Obama and his recent staggeringly hypocritical purchase of a 15 million dollar waterfront mansion on Martha’s Vineyard. Why would Obama purchase a waterfront mansion doomed to sink underwater in twelve years? He wouldn’t. Let’s review.

In Obama’s first inaugural address 1.20.09 he pledged to “roll back the specter of a warming planet.” In his second inaugural address 1.21.13 he affirmed climate change saying: “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.” He went on to shame anyone who disagreed with his assessment saying, “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and powerful storms.”

The overwhelming judgment of science?? Why did Obama ignore the damning 2009 Climategate scandal, NASA climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer’s 2010 book, and later the 2014 Senate testimony of Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore? Let’s find out.

“Climategate is the scandal that erupted on 11.19.09 when a collection of email messages, data files and data processing programs were leaked from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU) located in the UK, revealing scientific fraud and data manipulation by scientists concerning the global warming theory. Climategate is said to have revealed the biggest scientific hoax in world history.

amgreatness.com/2019/09/10/a-conservative-case-for-carbon-taxes-that-isnt/

One of the conservative movement’s biggest defeats over the past two decades has been its failure to strip the gears of the climate-change propaganda machine.

With few exceptions—among them the Heartland Institute, former Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas), and a handful of conservative commentators—Republicans surrendered to the climate cabal’s 20-year rampage in our public schools, the news media, and statehouses from coast to coast.

K-12 school textbooks now are filled with dire predictions about anthropogenic global warming and college campuses administer nonstop brainwashing on the subject while dedicating enormous amounts of publicly funded “research” to give an academic mooring to climate hysteria. Young people are suffering from any number of climate-fueled panic disorders as mental health professionals figure out how they, too, can cash in on the climate racket.

President Obama called climate change a bigger global threat than Islamic terrorism; his political progeny now are foot-stomping their way around Capitol Hill wielding copies of the Green New Deal while his wannabe successors embarrass themselves during cable news forums and campaign events by proposing outlandish solutions to anthropogenic global warming.

This political phenomenon took hold as Republicans either sat idle or were coaxed into acquiescence by climate bullies—that is, until President Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord and empowered his Republican administration to dismantle President Obama’s climate legacy as quickly as possible.

Republicans Prepare to Sell Out (As Usual)