RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-navy-veteran-went-to-prison-for-digging-ponds-in-the-mountains-11556317175

“I am haunted by waters,” wrote Norman Maclean in “A River Runs Through It,” his 1976 novel about growing up in a family of Montana fly fishermen. Joe Robertson was haunted by waters of a different kind—the kind that can land someone in federal prison without warning. These are “navigable waters,” which carry on their current the full force of federal power to bankrupt and jail people who meddle with them. The problem is that no one knows what they are.

Robertson, a Navy veteran who died in March at 80, spent 18 months in prison for getting the definition of “navigable waters” wrong. The land he owned in the Montana mountains was more than 40 miles from the nearest genuinely navigable river, but a trickle ran through it: the combined force of two garden hoses meandering down the slope in a channel about a foot deep and a foot wide.

Before he died, Robertson and his wife, Carrie, dug ponds in the path of their modest mountain trickle. The Environmental Protection Agency declared it a “navigable water” subject to the Clean Water Act and prosecuted him for “discharging” pollutants without a permit. He was found guilty in 2016. In addition to his 18 months in prison, Robertson was ordered to pay a $130,000 fine.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/04/25/earth-day-should-return-to-its-roots/

Last Monday, April 22, was Earth Day, a celebration conceived by then-U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson and first held in 1970 as a “symbol of environmental responsibility and stewardship.” In the spirit of the time, it was a touchy-feely, consciousness-raising, New Age experience. Most activities were organized at the grassroots level.

In recent years, however, Earth Day has devolved into an occasion for professional environmental activists to warn of apocalypse, dish anti-technology dirt, proselytize, and raise money to sustain the movement. In the cacophony of false narratives and “alternative facts,” provability often takes a back seat to plausibility.

And then there’s the mindless publicity-seeking. Consider this headline from the local CBS affiliate in Los Angeles: “Protesters Climb, Glue Themselves To Globe Outside Universal Studios To Mark Earth Day.” And just plain old mindlessness: In San Francisco, the sub-theme for the day was, “Celebrate the Green New Deal,” one of the most poorly conceived, destructive political proposals in recent memory.

The Earth Day Network, which organizes Earth Day events and advocacy, regularly distorts or ignores science and exaggerates fears in order to advance its anti-technology, anti-corporate, Big Government agenda. With a 2019 theme of “Protect Our Species,” this year’s event was no exception. Ironically, “our species” seems not to refer to us humans, homo sapiens, but only to the other species on the planet, which we are destroying.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/04/going_green_and_socialism.html

In response to New York City mayor Bill de Blasio’s threat to make glass and steel skyscrapers “extinct” because “They have no place in our city or our Earth anymore,” the New York Post ran a cartoon depicting the mayor as Fred Flintstone presenting a building design made of rocks. A perfectly sound comment, given that those who proclaim themselves to be “progressives” are clearly rejecting the modern age and the true progress that has lifted humankind from millennia of abject poverty to abundance over the last few centuries. The process of advancement started in Western Europe with the rise of capitalism and has spread across the world. The process is not yet complete, as people even in the advanced nations still have unmet needs and desires. Indeed, the entire field of economics is based on the assumption that human wants are unlimited. The rise of the Green movement threatens to halt any further gains in material living standards and to roll back much of what has been accomplished since the Industrial Revolution.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/changing_hearts_and_minds_on_nuclear_power.html

Until we’re able to fuel America and the rest of the world with cleaner forms of renewable energy, we need the ability to generate the electricity necessary to sustain civilization while curbing carbon emissions. For now, the clamor for less carbon, more renewable fuels and cleaner energy often ignores one of the cleanest, cheapest and most abundant supplies of energy on Earth. 

Nuclear power generates about 20 percent of the electricity in the United States today, but it holds the potential to create much more. Affordable electricity is also a key issue for millions of American seniors who live on fixed incomes and can ill afford higher utility bills. The 98 nuclear plants currently on-line in the U.S. contributed more than 73,000 thousand megawatt hours to the nation’s grid in January, making it the third most productive energy source behind coal and natural gas. But nuclear power generation has remained virtually flat over the past 18 years. The question is ‘why?’

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/04/23/will-the-warming-alarmists-ever-cool-it/

A decade ago, a story on National Public Radio, referring to a study from the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” said global warming was at that point “irreversible.” A couple of years earlier, the WorldWatch Institute claimed that by 2000, global warming had already been responsible for “150,000 excess deaths annually.” In between those gloomy assertions, the Union of Concerned Scientists was sure “global warming is happening” and that man was the “primary cause.”

Today, adherents call it “climate change.” And, according to a professor in Zurich, “it’s already begun.”

Of course there could be no other possible explanations for what’s being observed — and for what’s being assumed, given that the temperature record can’t be trusted. No chance there are other factors. Not the sun, not the natural climate cycle, not wobbles in Earth’s rotation or its varying elliptical orbit around the sun, nor ocean currents. It has to be human activity.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/21/earth-day-opposing-progress-trumps-protecting-the-planet/

April 21 is Earth Day, a celebration originally conceived by then-U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.) and first held in 1970 as a “symbol of environmental responsibility and stewardship.” In the spirit of the time, it was a touchy-feely, consciousness-raising, New Age experience. Most activities were organized at the grassroots level.In recent years, however, Earth Day has become an occasion for professional environmental activists and alarmists to warn of apocalypse, dish anti-technology dirt, proselytize, and raise money more to sustain their movement than to sustain the planet. Provability inevitably takes a back seat to alleged plausibility.

The Earth Day Network, which organizes Earth Day events and advocacy, regularly distorts or ignores science and exaggerates fears in order to advance its anti-technology, big government agenda. With a 2019 theme of “Protect Our Species,” this year’s event is no exception. Predictably, “our species” refers not to us humans, homo sapiens, but only to the other species on the planet, which we are destroying.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-4-16-the-soho-forum-global-warming-debate-and-the-impact-of-scientific-arguments

As you may have noticed from the announcement that appeared for the past week or so on my sidebar, the Soho Forum held a debate Monday night on the issue of Global Warming. The official resolution for the debate was Resolved: There is little or no rigorous evidence that rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are causing dangerous global warming and threatening life on the planet. The debaters were Craig Idso for the affirmative, and Jeffrey Bennett for the negative.

For those who haven’t heard of it, the Soho Forum sponsors debates, roughly monthly, on current policy issues. The venue is usually the Subculture Theater, at 45 Bleecker Street in Manhattan. The Forum’s Director is long-time Barron’s senior editor Gene Epstein; and the Chief Operating Officer is my daughter Jane. Other recent Soho Forum debate topics have included things like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the causes of the 2008-09 financial crisis.

Holding a debate on the issue of global warming or “climate change” — and particularly one focused on the scientific question of whether empirical evidence supports or refutes the hypothesis of potential dangerous warming — is often difficult. Contrary to what you might think, the problem is not that it is hard to find scientifically-literate advocates for the skeptic position. Actually, there are plenty of those. Rather, the problem generally is that adherents to the alarmist cause refuse to debate anyone who disagrees with their position, often denigrating their adversaries as “climate deniers.” So Gene Epstein deserves credit for locating Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Bennett also deserves credit for being willing to put his position to the test.