Displaying posts published in

December 2022

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Real-Life Matrix: ‘EctoLife’ Artificial Womb Facility to Engineer, Grow Babies in ‘Factory’ by Catherine Salgado

By on December 15th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/culture/catherinesalgado/2022/12/14/the-real-life-matrix-ectolife-artificial-womb-facility-to-engineer-grow-babies-in-factory-n1653718

If you thought the millions of plastic pods artificially “growing” human babies in The Matrix were creepy, wait until you see the animation of “EctoLife,” set to be the world’s first artificial womb facility. A recent video posted online by its inventor, Hashem Al-Ghaili, enthusiastically described a facility where tens of thousands of babies could be engineered and gestated in artificial “wombs” with constant monitoring to check for biological defects and growth. EctoLife claims it will engineer the most “viable and genetically superior embryo” as it is “reinventing evolution,” producing up to “30,000 lab-grown babies per year.”

As EctoLife asserted, “Our goal is to provide you with an intelligent offspring that truly reflects your smart choices.” Because eugenics led to such wonderful results in the 20th century!

Remember how leftists have been telling us for years, and continue to tell us, that we’re overpopulating the earth? EctoLife’s ad explicitly said it is “designed to help countries that are suffering from severe population decline”—something that most of the world is suffering from, including America, by the way. Turns out that forgoing reproducing to pursue high-powered careers, luxury vacations, and an end to “climate change” was not such a bright idea. The solution is not being to have babies the way God intended, of course, but to engineer and grow them in fake wombs. That way, “artificial intelligence” (AI) can monitor your baby for “genetic abnormalities” (it’s unclear what would happen to babies who turn out to be supposedly imperfect).

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Are we finally reaching peak climate hysteria? The eco-derangement of the elites is a threat to reason, freedom and jobs.Brendan O’Neill

By on December 15th, 2022

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/12/09/are-we-finally-reaching-peak-climate-hysteria/

The madness of the greens is peaking. This week a leading eco-politician in the UK, Caroline Lucas of the Green Party, referred to the building of a new coalmine as a ‘crime against humanity’. Take that in. Once upon a time it was mass murder, extermination, enslavement and the forced deportation of a people that were considered crimes against humanity. Now the building of a mine in Cumbria in north-west England that will create 500 new jobs and produce 2.8million tonnes of coal a year is referred to in such terms. Perhaps the coalmine bosses should be packed off to The Hague. Maybe the men who’ll dig the coal should be forced alongside the likes of ISIS to account for their genocidal behaviour.

We cannot let Ms Lucas’s crazed comments just slide by. We need to reflect on how we arrived at a situation where a mainstream politician, one feted by the media establishment, can liken digging for coal to crimes of extermination. It was in the Guardian – where else? – that Ms Lucas made her feverish claims. On Wednesday, when the government gave the go-ahead to the Cumbria mine, the first new coalmine in Britain for 30 years, Lucas wrote that the whole thing is ‘truly terrible’. This ‘climate-busting, backward-looking coalmine’ is nothing short of a ‘climate crime against humanity’, she said.

It isn’t though, is it? Sorry to be pedantic but it is not a crime to extract coal from the earth. If it were, the leaders of China – where they produce 13million tonnes of coal a day , rather putting into perspective the Cumbria mine’s 2.8million tonnes a year – would be languishing in the clink. I look forward to Ms Lucas performing a citizen’s arrest on Xi Jinping. It certainly is not a crime against humanity. That term entered popular usage during the Nuremberg trials of the Nazis. It refers to an act of evil of such enormity that it can be seen as an assault on all of humankind. Earth to Ms Lucas: extracting coal to make steel – what the Cumbria coal will mostly be used for – is not an affront to humankind. I’ll tell you what is an affront, though: speaking about the burning of coal in the same language that is used to refer to the burning of human beings. That, Caroline, is despicable.

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

This Winter We Will See the Dangerous Results of Climate Alarmism By Peter J. Wallison & Benjamin Zycher

By on December 15th, 2022

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/12/12/this_winter_we_will_see_the_dangerous_results_of_climate_alarmism_869598.html

Despite alarmist media claims, there is no evidence that a climate “crisis” looms in our future, let alone imminent danger of a climate catastrophe. Nevertheless, we are now witnessing decisions by the Biden administration and other countries that could endanger lives around the world this winter.

In an effort to reduce GHG emissions, the administration has taken actions resulting in a sharp decline in current and prospective investment in U.S. oil and natural gas production, raising prices for fossil fuels both in the U.S. and globally. This means that U.S. policies alone will cause severe increases in the price of fossil fuels used for heating homes, schools and businesses in Europe and elsewhere, risking serious illness and death for large portions of the world’s population, especially the poor. The Russian cut in deliveries of natural gas to Europe have exacerbated that effect. The New York Times (NYT) recently reported that people were cutting Europe’s forests for firewood because fossil fuels were too costly or unavailable. This reflects the desperation that unnecessary and shortsighted U.S. and European policies have created.

Yet, ignoring this reality and looking for alarming headlines, most daily media reports about climate change repeat the false claim that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) will cause a climate catastrophe in the near future. With this as a foundation, it seems that every policy must be directed to preventing this “disaster.”

A recent article in the NYT, quoting a UN report, could be labelled Exhibit A. Titled “Climate Pledges Fizzle as Havoc Looms for Globe,” the opening paragraph, “Countries around the world are failing to live up to their commitments to fight climate change, pointing the Earth toward a future with more intense flooding, wildfires, drought, heatwaves and species extinction,” uncritically accepts the UN’s unfounded alarmism. By ignoring the readily available relevant science summarized below, the NYT and others seem to be trying to scare the public into supporting desperate actions in America and abroad that ostensibly will prevent catastrophic global climate change.

Continue reading →
IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Study Finds NGOs Shipping Illegal Immigrants Across The U.S. — Republicans Respond With An Amnesty Bill

By on December 15th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/12/15/study-finds-ngos-shipping-illegal-immigrants-across-the-u-s-republicans-respond-with-an-amnesty-bill/

Over the weekend, a massive caravan of more than 5,000 crossed the southern border in what is described as “a stunning surge that shocked immigration agents, neighboring towns, and state officials.”

Where will these illegals end up? Most likely, everywhere inside the U.S., courtesy of several non-profit groups that are working with the Biden administration in an under-the-radar mass resettlement effort.

An investigation by the Heritage Foundation tracked more than 30,000 cell phones that arrived at Customs and Border Control facilities or dozens of non-profits at or near the southern border in January 2022. It then tracked those phones over time to see where they ended up.

For example, Heritage identified more than 400 cell phones at the CBP station in Del Rio, Texas, less than five miles from the border. Those phones later showed up in more than 40 different states.

Heritage also found more than 30,000 phones at more than 30 “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) in Texas and California. (This amounts to one-fifth of those known to have crossed illegally that month.)

The NGOs included groups such as the International Rescue Committee, World Relief, Mission Border Hope, Refugee Services of Texas, as well as Jewish Family Service and Catholic Charities.

“Overflow from Customs and Border Protection is being transferred to these organizations so
that Border Patrol avoids overcrowded facilities,” the Heritage memo announcing its findings states. “These organizations apply for, and receive, taxpayer money to provide processing and transportation services and infrastructure to facilitate the migration of illegal aliens into the interior of the country.”

Catholic Charities alone appears to have handled more than 3,000 illegals in January, and then transported them to 433 different congressional districts.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Fusion Works and Why It’s a Breakthrough American science scores a triumph, though it’ll be decades before it yields a viable energy source. By Steven E. Koonin and Robert L. Powell

By on December 15th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-fusion-works-and-why-its-a-breakthrough-national-ignition-facility-laser-beam-laboratory-science-nuclear-weapon-11671052081?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The Energy Department has announced the first gain in energy from fusion in a laboratory—the first time fusion reactions produced more energy than it took to induce them. Last week 192 laser beams at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility heated and compressed a capsule of hydrogen to previously unattainable temperatures and pressures, igniting fusion reactions that produced 50% more energy than the laser beams had delivered.

Nuclear reactions can release the energy that binds together protons and neutrons in an atom’s nucleus. Nuclear power plants use fission, not fusion. Fission releases energy when a large uranium nucleus splits into two radioactive fragments, which carry the energy as they fly apart.

Fusion, by contrast, relies on the universe’s smallest atom, hydrogen. Energy is released when two hydrogen nuclei combine to produce a helium nucleus and a neutron. Unlike fission, fusion produces no radioactive fragments. Fusion is much harder to induce than fission, since the hydrogen nuclei must be heated to nearly 100 million degrees Celsius to overcome the electrical repulsion that hinders their reaction. Stars run on fusion energy, but on Earth it has previously been released only in thermonuclear explosions. This stunning new result in laboratory fusion opens doors for unprecedented studies in basic and applied science.

The concept of laser fusion had been pursued without success since the 1960s and it became a central part of a 1990s program to ensure continued confidence in the nuclear-weapons stockpile without underground testing. Although scientists knew that high-powered laser beams could probe the properties of matter relevant to the early stages of detonating a nuclear weapon, the goal of laser fusion would allow for studies in the later stages. It would also challenge and demonstrate the ability to understand and predict the dynamics of hot, dense matter more generally.

Construction of the ignition facility at the Livermore lab began in 1997, and experiments attempting ignition began soon after construction was completed in 2009. The design and construction of the world’s most powerful laser was an engineering triumph, but three years of failed attempts to achieve fusion ignition brought the program close to cancellation in 2012. But the program continued with a more deliberate approach that included outside peer review.

Continue reading →