“[Christopher Keating] rigged the bet. Compare it with the old-West poker player who stacks the deck, marks the cards, seats his opponents so he can see their hands in mirrors, and hides a few aces up his sleeve.”
“Physicist offers $10,000 to anyone who can disprove ‘man-made global climate change'”, the headline at Daily Kos (June 22, 2014) proclaimed. “Climate change deniers using same methods as tobacco industry, says physicist.”
Wow! It’s put-up or shut-up time for climate skeptics like us at the Cornwall Alliance, right? Ten grand ripe for the picking!
All we have to do is lay out our proof and collect the dough. And if we don’t? Well, obviously we’re admitting we don’t dare put our arguments to the test.
But there’s a whole lot less here than it appears.…
Continue Reading“Economists have long argued that these [national security] claims are based on economic misunderstandings, yet they are still cited as political justifications for military deployment of U.S. forces in the Middle East. These policies along with past military interventions are at the root of international terrorism directed at the United States.”
Military generals are charged with managing national security, which has included ensuring access to “needed” natural resources. U.S. military goals have been further stretched to securing access to resources “needed” for economic security.
The first U.S. overseas seizure concerned bird guano, a fertilizer like no other at the time. If Peru insisted on getting a lot of money for this valuable product, the only solution was invasion. The U.S. Congress, in response to public opinion, passed the Guano Islands Act of 1856, which authorized Americans to take any guano deposits they discovered.…
Continue Reading“A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top,” newspaper journalist James Reston once wrote.
There could be no more apropos example of this than Barack Obama’s new proposed rules to mothball “dirty” coal power plants; to reduce CO2 power plant emissions 30 percent from their 2005 level by 2030; and to set voluntary targets for the percentage of renewable energy in each state by 2029.
Obama’s new push is an attempt to address leakage, at least within the United States. The term is not meant to describe the leakage in a high-voltage electric transmission line that can cause fires, damage, or electrocution. Rather, it is meant to describe the migrating of jobs, industries, population, and votes to other states due to planned higher electricity rates mainly in California and other Blue states as a result of forcing a shift to inferior renewable energies.…
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