GIVE TIL IT HURTS!

16th century technology comes to West By-God Virginia

A blight, an eyesore, and an inefficient, inadequate “solution” to a problem that does not exist.

This is what happens when a wind farm comes to a coal town
Sheila Wagoner is not a fan of the wind farm overlooking Keyser, West Virginia.

“I really don’t care for those windmills,” the 71-year-old says. “I guess I wasn’t brought up with that kind of society. Like 50 of ’em together? Who likes all that?”

It’s not just the visual contrast that Wagoner finds bothersome. She is from one of many families in Keyser—and throughout West Virginia—that relied on the coal industry for generations. Her late father worked as a railway engineer for coal trains that used to run non-stop through Keyser.

Today, those trains are an increasingly rare sight.

Not to worry; once the faltering shitlib fever-dream finally fades to black and the polity regains its collective sanity—which it assuredly will, one way or another; there’ll be no other choice when the whole shambolic sham of a shitshow has finally unraveled so entirely that the fact of its existence can no longer be denied by even the most purblind, self-deluded lackwit among us—Americans will be eager, perhaps even desperate, to avail themselves of the affordable, plentiful energy provided by proven-reliable technological improvements which shouldered their antiquated, long since abandoned predecessors aside in the first goddamned place.

There’s a very good reason this rough shoving-aside occurred many, many decades ago, a reason which guarantees that such a displacement will, in fact MUST, occur again, regardless of how frantically bawling-brat shitlibs labor to keep their benighted subjects shivering in the dark in perpetuity—cold, hungry, utterly miserable, and above all, obedient.

In 2022, the country’s first major climate policy, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, passed with the promise to speed up that transition, offering at least $4 billion to boost development of renewable projects like the Pinnacle Wind Farm in Keyser.

Huh. So let me get this straight: here we have the nation’s “first major climate policy”—smuggled in all stealthy-like under the cloak of a bit of legislative jiggery-pokery whose title makes no mention of climate policy whatsoever. Sounds kinda suspicious, no? Or maybe that’s just me, I can be overly cynical like that now and then.

Hell, forget alleviating any purely-notional climate issues, it won’t no way no how reduce inflation, even. That’s not the actual intention here, never has been—as is the case with nearly all the other bonehead boondoggles rammed down American throats via remote diktat puked forth by the Most Exalted Lord High Mucky-Mucks of far-off Mordor On The Potomac, in Congress assembled.

That law passed with the key vote of West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, but Tillman is skeptical that those benefits will reach Keyser.

“I like Joe. I talk to him a good bit. But the thing is a city like Keyser [doesn’t] ever see any of that money,” says (Keyser’s Mayor Damon) Tillman. “That money all goes to bigger cities – Morgantown, Jefferson County, Charleston. So it doesn’t do us any good.”

With all due respect, Mr Mayor, it doesn’t do any Normal American any good. Nor anybody else neither, by no means exclusive to your city and state but across the nation—with the notable exception of wily, double-dealing Congresscreatures à la le Manchin and the well-heeled schemers and bunco artists who own their ilk lock, stock and barrel. Make no mistake, s’il vous plaît: those miserable tapeworms are Manchin’s actual constituents, the people he really works for, not you ridge-running Sad Sacks stuck out there in your disgusting hinterlands hovels. Forget this at your dire peril.

No, we don’t have to like it. We DO have to face up to it, honestly, resolutely, and unflinchingly. And that right soon, lest continued foot-shuffling, mumblemouthed rationalization, and weak-kneed dithering prove to be our undoing.

Absent a Real American renaissance and concomitant renewal of a staunch, unyielding commitment to see the ideals of Her Founding restored in full and vigorously safeguarded—no negotiation, no compromise, no tit-for-tat spit-swapping with the selfsame scurvy, lying motherfuckers who, after all, stole our country from us in the first place—there can be but one denouement, a most unhappy ending to the long American story: with our integrity besmirched, our honor forsaken, our rights revoked, our liberty lost, and our children enslaved.

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EV news

Amusingly, it’s all bad. As per usual, Buck Throckmorton has it all gathered together in the usual handy, dandy, and convenient spot, closing out this edition’s festivities with a pluperfect example of what sane sorts are talking about when they make sport of those “unintended consequences” brought inevitably on in the wake of shitlib presumptuousness, arrogance-in-ignorance, and mulish disregard for the real-world consequences of their disastrous policies.

Electric vehicles are significantly heavier than their gasoline-powered equivalents, up to 50% heavier in some cases. Aside from damaging roads and putting parking garages at risk, the force of a moving EV is also more than many guardrails can withstand.

“Crash tests indicate nation’s guardrail system can’t handle heavy electric vehicles” [AP – 01/31/2024]

Last fall, engineers at Nebraska’s Midwest Roadside Safety Facility watched as an electric-powered pickup truck hurtled toward a guardrail installed on the facility’s testing ground on the edge of the local municipal airport. The nearly 4-ton (3.6 metric ton) 2022 Rivian R1T tore through the metal guardrail and hardly slowed until hitting a concrete barrier yards away on the other side.

Barriers along the medians of divided highways serve to keep out of control vehicles from crossing over into oncoming traffic, thus preventing high-speed, head-on collisions. That simple safety mechanism has saved a tremendous number of lives. Thanks to the “EV transition,” we’ll just have to get used to mangled cars and mangled bodies due to head-on highway collisions again.

Ooookay, then. Gotta admit, as steadfast a derider of the most recent iteration of the recurrent CPC (coal powered car) pipe-dream as I’ve always been, even I never thought of that one before. But hey, saving Mommy Gaia from the planetary havoc inflicted by those horrible, terrible, double-plus-ungood “fossil fuels” (which are created in the course of Her own natural processes, by the by) is worth any price we must pay, right, idiots?

I mean, otherwise shitlibs might have to own up to being backasswards and wrong yet again, and the grown-ups might smack their hand, tell them to shut up, and make them go sit in the Naughty Kid corner and think things over for a few hours. Why, it’s just so darn UNFAAAIIIIR!!! Can’t have that, now can we?

Traveshamockery of “justice”

Not to beat this dead old horse or anything, but I just had to throw in this bit from Steyn’s pre-post-mort because I thought it was just funny as hell.

You might recall that exactly a week ago we linked to Kerry Wakefield’s excellent primer on the trial from The Spectator Down Under. This was Miss Wakefield’s final paragraph:

Given the vindictive USD$83 million damages found against Trump in his case against serial rape accuser E. Jean Carroll, one cannot be optimistic about any jury trial in deep blue Washington DC. But Steyn is going down fighting, and one cannot but admire his guts and brio, even if his bank balance has been cleaned out. Sadly Steyn, representing himself, is now in a wheelchair, having recently suffered three heart attacks. If ever there were a case deserving funding, it is his. The trial continues.

Williams played the Trump card in the final minutes of the trial, linking “election deniers” with “science deniers” and asking the jury to send a strong message to stop attacks on all the other scientists out there:

MR. WILLIAMS: And as you’ve been instructed, if you find punitive damages are appropriate for outrageous behavior, you can set an amount not just to punish, but to serve as an example to prevent others from acting in the same — in a same or similar way.

These attacks on Climate Scientists have to stop, and you now have the opportunity—

MS. WEATHERFORD: Objection.

MR. STEYN: Objection.

THE COURT: Sustained.

MR. WILLIAMS: Sustained? I am saying this heated…

MR. STEYN: My Lord, he’s continuing to talk.

Heh. Good one, Mark.

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The First Amendment: as dead as all the rest of ’em

To the surprise of precisely no one, Mordor on the Potomac kangaroo court rules that, in Amerika v2.0, there is no right to freedom of speech.

A Bad Day for America
As many of you already know, a Washington, DC jury today found the Defendants (Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg) liable for defamatory speech and reckless disregard of provable facts. Putting aside the monetary damages, the real damage done by this case is to every American who still believes in the First Amendment.

The precedent set today, and as alluded to by Justice Alito when the case was petitioned before the U.S. Supreme Court, means that disagreement and/or criticism of a matter of public policy — the founding principle of this country — is now in doubt. And should you choose to give voice to any dissent, you can brought before a jury, held responsible, and fined.

Think this is just rhetoric? Consider, Mark Steyn is a member of the media. As such, he is supposedly afforded First Amendment protections. If a member of the media is no longer protected, what do you think that means for every day citizens? And it doesn’t matter if you are in DC or Montana — anyone can file in the jurisdiction of his or her choosing.

Gee, what ought Real Americans to do about that, I wonder? I can make an excellent guess at what we actually WILL do, alas. And it disgraces us far worse than the liberty-haters on that DC jury have just disgraced themselves, although those morons are much too goddamned stupid to know they have—or care, either. Further details:

The D.C. Circuit Court has ruled: Commentator Mark Steyn and space blogger and sometime PJ contributor Rand Simberg, after 13 years of legal maneuvering funded by a dark money group…

…are indeed liable for defaming Michael Mann by reporting on the way he was lying about being a Nobel laureate and engaging in a concerted effort to defame other climate scientists — including accusing Judith Curry of sleeping her way to the top, using statistical methods to generate the results he wanted (research malpractice for mere mortals).

For which he was awarded $1 each from Steyn and Simberg in compensatory damages.

This would be a laughable award, except the jury then piled on punitive damages: $1,000,000 from Steyn and $1,000 from Simberg.

Mann’s attorneys made a play for the D.C. jury and cashed in.

As will most other shitlib liars who go venue-shopping and end up hitting the big Wheel of Juridical Fortune jackpot.

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Moar continuing ed!

Climatology 101 this time, courtesy of Aesop.

To listen to the idiot retards of the media (but I repeat myself), you’d think everyone living in Califrutopia should be building an ark or something.

Fortunately, unlike most of the failed stand-up comics and braindead spokesbimbos who become weatherguessers and newsreaders, some of us have lived here more than a year or two, and we know that California has wet years, and dry years, which alternate at whim. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Cleverly, there has long been a name for what’s going on now, and it’s not the “Pineapple Express”, the “Fruit Cocktail Zephyr”, or any other such dipshitical dopey name they focus-grouped into being to try and sell more commercials in between bouts of weather doomporn.

The actual name for what’s happening now goes by a rather more accurate name.

We call it “rain”.

It ain’t caused by globull warmism, or climate change, nor any other such ginned up silliness so stupid, you need horsefaced fetal alcohol midwit dropouts from Sweden to shill for it.

In fact, there’s another clever name for what’s happening at the moment, and why.

It’s called “winter”.

And – shocker of shockers – in February!!! Who’d have foreseen that?!?

If ever there was a time to panic, surely it is now, Califrutopians. Be sure that while you do, you stay tuned to your local TV news station to keep up with the latest weather updates; as always, our one and only concern is Keeping You Safe!©

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DOG BITES MAN!!!

No big surprise here, I shouldn’t think.

The lying liars who talk about climate change know that they’re spouting bullshit.

More than 90 percent of NOAA’s temperature monitoring stations have a heat bias, according to Anthony Watts, a meteorologist, senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute, author of climate website Watts Up With That, and director of a study that examined NOAA’s climate stations.“

And with that large of a number, over 90 percent, the methods that NOAA employs to try to reduce this don’t work because the bias is so overwhelming,” Mr. Watts told The Epoch Times.

“The few stations that are left that are not biased because they are, for example, outside of town in a field and are an agricultural research station that’s been around for 100 years…their data gets completely swamped by the much larger set of biased data. There’s no way you can adjust that out.”

The article starts with the claim from the Useless Nations about how if the planet temperature goes up by 1.5 degrees C, then we’re all going to die.

Uh, no. There are three periods in human history when the temps went up by more than 2 degrees C. The Minoan Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, and the Medieval Warm Period. I would point out that all three of those periods corresponded with increased human growth and technology, not less. Also, no massive planet shattering cataclysms either.

Now add in data that is blatantly biased. The whole Global Warming Climate Cooling Change cult falls apart like a junkie who hasn’t gotten a fix in 24 hours.

Well, naturally. But then, what else would any reasonably well-informed, aware person expect from them other than a perfervid aversion to facts, truth, and observable reality? FederalGovCo lies so much, so continually, it’s gotta be pretty tough for ‘em by now to even realize they’re doing it at all, forget about owning up to it and trying to do better. Dishonesty, deceit, and overweening bumptiousness are the Government Grey Man’s default response at this point, regardless of topic or context: reflexive, instinctive, as if those ignoble traits were hard-coded into their DNA.

My wise old grandma put it best: they’d rather climb a tree and tell a lie than stand flatfooted and tell the truth. That a great nation could have somehow produced such horribly diseased specimens has to be one of the most grotesque ironies in the human tragicomedy.

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So, how’s that forced EV-conversion thing working out for ya, Mr “pResident”?

NOT. TOO. GOOD.

Hertz is selling 20,000 electric vehicles to buy gasoline cars instead
Hertz, which has made a big push into electric vehicles in recent years, has decided it’s time to cut back. The company will sell off a third of its electric fleet, totaling roughly 20,000 vehicles, and use the money they bring to purchase more gasoline powered vehicles.

Electric vehicles have been hurting Hertz’s financials, executives have said, because, despite costing less to maintain, they have higher damage-repair costs and, also, higher depreciation.

“[C]ollision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle,” Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said in a recent analyst call.

And EV price declines in the new car market have pushed down the resale value of Hertz’s used EV rental cars.

“The MSRP declines in EVs over the course of 2023, driven primarily by Tesla, have driven the fair market value of our EVs lower as compared to last year, such that a salvage creates a larger loss and, therefore, greater burden,” Scherr said.

Simply put, people are generally willing to pay a certain amount less for a used car than for a new one. As the price of new car goes down, that also pushes down what people are willing to pay to buy a used one.

Hertz expects to take a loss of about $245 million due to depreciation on the EVs, an average of about $12,250, per vehicle the company said in an SEC filing.

If you don’t already know it by now, you certainly should: Mike’s Iron Law #187: There’s always a workaround, and true Americans will always be able to find it. Flipping the big honking middle-digit salute at FederalGovCo like this counts as one of the very best examples I can think of.

On the other hand, though, watch now as the goobermint takes over the rent-a-car industry entire in retaliation. Who can say, maybe such a dick-move was the whole idea from the very beginning?

Just say no

Buck Throckmorton has rapidly become the go-to guy for EV news, debunkings, and unpleasant realities, and there’s a very good reason for that. To wit:

Welcome to 2024! Since New Year’s Day one year ago, the “electric vehicle transition” has gone from being a foregone conclusion to being a rolling failure. Auto manufacturers who bought into the hype are looking at a catastrophic financial miscalculation, and typical car drivers have gone from being curious (at best) to being generally negative about purchasing EVs. I believe that the conservative media’s pushback against EVs has had a considerable impact.

In other words, 2023 was a very good year – a year in which we turned opinion against electric vehicles. The people who want a boutique, status-symbol EV can continue to buy Teslas. (But can we please kill off the taxpayer subsidies for Tesla?) For all the rest, let 2024 be the year when legacy automakers throw in the towel on the eco-communist EV experiment.

For today, let’s do our periodic update on the EV Follies…

“Ford cutting 2024 F-150 Lightning production plans by half, suppliers told; The news comes amid an industrywide pullback in EV investment due to slower-than-expected sales growth.” [Automotive News – 12/11/2023]

Ford Motor Co. is dialing back planned output of the electric F-150 Lightning pickup by half next year because of “changing market demand,” a steep pullback of a high-profile nameplate the automaker spent most of this year working to build in larger numbers.

Although I’ve enjoyed writing about how emphatically consumers have rejected Ford’s flagship EV, in fairness I should point out that the Ford F150 Conflagration Lightning is a spectacularly awful vehicle. Aside from its tendency to burst into flames, it performs poorly at towing, hauling for distance, and operating in the cold – the basic functionalities that are expected of a pickup truck.

The buried lede in this story isn’t that Ford is cutting weekly production of its electric pickup from 3,200 units per week to 1,600 units per week, rather it’s that Ford’s executives still think there is a market that will absorb 1,600 of these abominations per week.

*****

It’s not just Ford that can’t sell its EVs. Half of Buick dealers would rather surrender their franchises than have to sell General Motors’ atrocious EV offerings.

“GM buys out nearly half of its Buick dealers across the country, who opt to not sell EVs” [Detroit Free Press – 12/20/2023]

GM’s awful executives, with little understanding of automobiles or their customers’ preferences, think they can simply dictate what consumers should buy. GM dealers, who actually understand automobiles and what their customers want, know better.

General Motors said nearly half its Buick dealers took buyouts this year rather than invest in selling and servicing electric vehicles as the automaker’s brands transition to all electric by 2030.

That means GM will end 2023 with about 1,000 Buick stores nationwide, down 47% from where it started the year.

*****

General Motors is rolling out an electric version of its popular Chevrolet Blazer sport utility. Well, it’s trying to, but not very successfully.

“2024 Chevy Blazer EV sales are already halted over software issues” [Elektrek – 12/26/2023]

Dozens of potential customers will have to keep waiting.

Ah well, I guess it’s nice to know it will impinge on mere dozens of the poor, pitiful fools; could be worse, could be hundreds. Nice also to see a few major manufacturers finally pushing back against being force-fed this fascistic, auto industry-killing program of FederalGovCo’s devising, instead of just lying back and taking it without demur as they have been up till now. Lots, lots more disincentives to buy into the goobermint’s credulity-straining propaganda push for these abominable, exorbitantly overpriced boat-anchors over at the Ace Place.

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Peak irony?

Or peak idiocy? Yet another occasion when we must embrace the healing power of “and.”


Ms Murray asks a few pertinent questions, then hips us to the bottom line.

Haven’t we all seen diesel-powered trucks deliver diesel-powered generators, to charge dead E.V. batteries?

How does a company get the lithium to build the battery? Diesel earth-moving machinery of course.

What happens when freezing temperatures cause an E.V. to break down? What kind of tow truck comes to the rescue?

When exposure to salt water causes a dangerous malfunction and the car rolls backward into a bay, what kind of vehicle pulls the car up from submersion?

Funny enough, after I posted that video, someone in the comments (shockingly) missed the irony, making this statement:

How is this ironic? There’s [sic] only a handful of EV semis on [the] road as of right now. How else are the cars going to make it to their destination?

Yes, there are “only a handful of EV semis” on the road because they can’t even come close to what diesel haulers can do. In a free market, when an idea isn’t good enough for consensual adoption, or costs more in dollars than the value it brings to the table… you find yourself in a reality in which “only a handful of EV semis” are found clunking across the road at any one time. (And, they are only there because of large infusions of taxpayer cash to prop up this bad idea.)

The world runs on oil, the only truly renewable source of energy, and one that doesn’t have to rely on another source of energy to make up for shortcomings.

Annnnd bingo. ‘Nuff said.

Update! Oh, and about that minor little “freezing temperatures” business.

Blue Cities Went All-In for Electric Transit, But the Buses Couldn’t Handle the Cold
Virtue-signaling liberalism is fighting another losing battle with reality.

On Wednesday, the Minnesota-focused news outlet MinnPost reported that several of the state’s largest cities have encountered significant obstacles in their quest to achieve planet-friendly public transit.

Frigid temperatures and a myriad of other problems have plagued Duluth and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul during their transition to zero-emission buses.

In subzero conditions — a staple of Minnesota winters — electric buses operate at only a fraction of their supposed 150-mile capacity.

Drew Kerr, spokesman for Twin Cities Metro Transit, explained that charged buses travel far shorter distances than manufacturers advertised.

“Using garage chargers alone, electric buses can remain in service for 70 to 75 miles before needing to return to the garage; with on-route chargers, electric buses were scheduled to be in service for up to 90 miles before returning to the garage,” Kerr said.

Duluth spokesman Dave Clark noted that the city has experienced significant problems with charging stations.

“They would fail. They would not perform. They would experience malfunctions, glitches. They were extremely problematic right out of the gate,” Clark said.

As anyone with even half a lick of fucking sense would expect, there’s much, much more at the link. In the sagacious words of Thomas Jefferson: It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Smart man, that Thomas Jefferson.

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A matter of life and death

Ever wonder why moronic shitlibs hate fossil fuels so desperately? Wonder no more, friend.

We Can’t Let Fossil Fuels Die Because They Keep Us Alive
It is not just cars and leaf blowers, stoves, or even air conditioning. What is at stake is much deeper: human dignity.

This is my first Christmas without my dad. As hard as it is for me and my siblings, it’s harder still for our mother, who is having her first Christmas since 1963 without him. Dad’s days in the hospital and subsequent death ushered in a wave of emotions, memories, and ponderings about heaven, sin, salvation, and for me, fossil fuels.

The last item in that list may sound strange, but let me explain. As an advocate for the energy industry, work follows me everywhere, and I love it because I love what I do. But fossil fuels are not just my life, they are life-giving and life-sustaining.

After his heart attack, Dad had a cardiac catheterization to assess the damage to his coronary artery. A hollow, plastic tube was inserted through the groin. Then, guided by the doctor, it traveled through the blood vessels, sending back data and information. In this procedure, the plastics are made of oil. The needle is forged to the finest of points by heat produced from coal. The medicines used to prevent infection are petrochemicals likely made from natural gas. Right there: fossil fuels.

A stent was also implanted to keep the blood flowing in a collapsed artery — thinner than human hair, hollow, nontoxic, noncorrosive, flexible, and 100 percent made from oil.

Medicines, IV bags, disposable gloves, hand sanitizer, the port in his arm, the numerous beeping machines — in every corner of Dad’s hospital room were products of abundant natural resources, which professionals deploy daily to save lives and heal patients. And we take it for granted.

Those advocating for a “green transition” never tell us what the plan is to make needles and bedpans once we “phase out” of fossil fuels. What is the replacement plan for plastic, rubber, cement, steel, and the millions of products they create?

Perhaps I thought these things sitting in Dad’s hospital room to distract myself from the heartache. Perhaps I think these things because it is my job. Either way, I know the world is not ready for fossil fuels to lose this battle. It is not just cars and leaf blowers, stoves, or even air conditioning. What is at stake is much deeper: human dignity — a dignity that elevates us above the harshness of nature and cruelty of illness or allows us to cleanse ourselves from the sweat of labor. 

We do not talk about the “then what” after fossil fuels are eliminated. But I assure you, life as we know it would be absolutely, categorically impossible without them.

For you and me, sure. For them? Never. Or so they think, at any rate. All just part and parcel of being what Lenin termed a “useful idiot,” see. And if we hated Normals have to keel over and drop dead en masse so’s they can feel all smug and sanctimonious about themselves and their “noble” Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™ works…well, so much the better, then. For these assholes, that’s a feature, not a bug. This gem, which ran over at the Eyrie with this week’s Screamin’ meemie Monday post, is worth another look, I think.

Yes indeedy-dew. Or, as Glenn has long maintained: I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who keep telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis. Call it Reynold’s Law, p’raps.

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Walk gently on Mother Earth

CHRIST, what a muttonhead.

Should I Stop Flying? It’s a Difficult Decision to Make.

Yes. Yes, you absolutely should, immediately. Every minute you dither makes Mother Gaia cry, you know.

Four years ago, during a Zoom work meeting, a colleague who lives in London told me she’d decided to quit flying on airplanes. She simply couldn’t stomach the cost to the climate. Due to her decision, she said calmly, she would probably never visit the U.S. again. My heart skipped a beat.

Her choice seemed so extreme. She shared it with me casually in the context of conversation, without a trace of judgment or moralizing. Still, I felt shocked and inexplicably a little defensive—but also intrigued. At the time, I traveled by air as often as ten times a year for my work as a journalist and to see family members strewn about the country. I couldn’t imagine my life without flying.

But my colleague’s comment lodged in my mind as a beautiful and challenging seed. Over the next few years, it cracked through the concrete of what had been, until then, a completely unexamined belief in my inviolable entitlement to flying. When the pandemic arrived, grounding travelers and shrinking international air travel by 60 percent in 2020, I began to see that significantly reducing air travel—or even giving it up altogether—was absolutely possible.

Rare individuals have chosen not to fly for ethical reasons for decades, but in the years leading up to the pandemic, the smattering of outliers coalesced into a movement. It took root most quickly and deeply in Sweden, which in 2017 became the first country in the world to establish a legally binding carbon-neutrality target—a year before Greta Thunberg began protesting in front of its parliament. In Swedish, the movement became known as flygskam, which translates to “flight shame,” a term commonly attributed to Swedish singer Staffan Lingberg, who gave up flying in 2017.

The number of people pledging to stop flying grew so much that Swedish air travel declined 5 percent between 2018 and 2019, and the movement strengthened in other parts of Europe as well. In the U.S., the flight-free movement, in the form of groups like Flight Free USA and No Fly Climate Sci, has been slower to spread but is growing. This year, Flight Free USA, for example, is on track to see the largest number of pledges to stop or minimize flying at 436. By comparison, tens of thousands have pledged in Europe over the past four years.

Well, an admiring pat on the head for all those Neo-Luddite lackwits, then. But y’all should by no means stop there. Ditch your cars, your houses, your modern appliances, any clothing you didn’t sew with your own two pwecious widdle hands. Throw out your computer, your tablet, and your sail foam, all of which are made of plastic derived from *gasp!!!* fossil fuels. No more mass transit, either, most of which consists of either gas or diesel-engined buses or electric trains and/or subways which rely on a mostly coal-burning power grid.

Squatting in your dark, freezing-cold cave to cook over an open fire? Perish FORBID! When I think of the miasma of planet-killing pollutants spewed into our fragile atmosphere by such unnecessary indulgences, I can but weep. Small-scale agriculture? Non: cow farts, plus plants have feewings too, you know. Composting? Nein: that is just soooo 2010; you should be scooping, bagging, and eating your own poo like more enlightened pyrsynz are doing. Travel/commuting by horseback? Nyet, nyet, NYET: animal cruelty, you heartless, soulless monster, amongst a whole slew of other objections.

Criminy, but these navel-gazing, sanctimonious handwringers really make my hair hurt sometimes.

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Leftards to Normals: drop dead!

I repeat: Take. Them. At. Their. Word. And govern your response accordingly.

They Might Want You to Eat Bugs, But They Would Prefer You Weren’t Here at All
Back in January, I did a story on Jane Goodall. Someone I thought was the epitome of the schweet, uber feminine British flower, who spoke softly and risked her life nobly doing things like saving chimpanzees.

A heroine of my youth. Who just wishes there were less of us ruining the world she loves.

“We cannot hide away from human population growth, because it underlies so many of the other problems. All these things we talk about wouldn’t be a problem if the world was the size of the population that there was 500 years ago.”

That infamous little snippet was from a discussion at a WEF gathering. The same WEF/Davos conferences for which Klaus Schwab has now removed all the videos that were once available to skewer them with on Twitter. It turns out the most elite, richest, and privileged geniuses among us have very thin skins when it comes to the peasants using their own self-congratulatory recordings to eviscerate their big plans and mock them mercilessly.

But the fact of the matter is, they don’t like us very much and would be thrilled to have fewer of us both to control and despoiling their precious Gaia. Life would be better all around.

Proponents of the idea that the world would be a better place sans a significant amount of the current population have a name unto themselves – it’s “Malthusians.” It springs from a late 18th, early 19th Century English economist named Robert Malthus, who believed that over-population was literally the bane of the Earth.

Dishonorable mentions for Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™ idiot Michael Mann and overpopulation sub-genius Paul Erlich follow, a trio sans brio who, between them, share the inglorious distinction of having been conclusively proven all wet more times than the separate-but-equally-wrong unholy triumvirate of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin has. Then, Beege provides a link to the coup de grace for the whole sorry crowd.

If by fiat I had to identify the most consequential ideas in the history of science, good and bad, in the top 10 would be the 1798 treatise An Essay on the Principle of Population, by English political economist Thomas Robert Malthus. On the positive side of the ledger, it inspired Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace to work out the mechanics of natural selection based on Malthus’s observation that populations tend to increase geometrically (2, 4, 8, 16…), whereas food reserves grow arithmetically (2, 3, 4, 5…), leading to competition for scarce resources and differential reproductive success, the driver of evolution.

On the negative side of the ledger are the policies derived from the belief in the inevitability of a Malthusian collapse. “The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race,” Malthus gloomily predicted. His scenario influenced policy makers to embrace social Darwinism and eugenics, resulting in draconian measures to restrict particular populations’ family size, including forced sterilizations.

Science writer Ronald Bailey tracks neo-Malthusians in his book The End of Doom (St. Martin’s Press, 2015), starting with Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 best seller The Population Bomb, which proclaimed that “the battle to feed all of humanity is over.” Many doomsayers followed. Worldwatch Institute founder Lester Brown, for example, declared in 1995, “Humanity’s greatest challenge may soon be just making it to the next harvest.” In a 2009 Scientific American article he affirmed his rhetorical question, “Could food shortages bring down civilization?” In a 2013 conference at the University of Vermont, Ehrlich assessed our chances of avoiding civilizational collapse at only 10 percent.

The problem with Malthusians, Bailey writes, is that they “cannot let go of the simple but clearly wrong idea that human beings are no different than a herd of deer when it comes to reproduction.” Humans are thinking animals. We find solutions—think Norman Borlaug and the green revolution. The result is the opposite of what Malthus predicted: the wealthiest nations with the greatest food security have the lowest fertility rates, whereas the most food-insecure countries have the highest fertility rates.

Among a plethora of other examples, Ehrlich’s famous losing bet springs immediately to mind:

The Simon–Ehrlich wager was a 1980 scientific wager between business professor Julian L. Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich, betting on a mutually agreed-upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990. The widely-followed contest originated in the pages of Social Science Quarterly, where Simon challenged Ehrlich to put his money where his mouth was. In response to Ehrlich’s published claim that “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000” Simon offered to take that bet, or, more realistically, “to stake US$10,000…on my belief that the cost of non-government-controlled raw materials (including grain and oil) will not rise in the long run.”

Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose any raw material he wanted and a date more than a year away, and he would wager on the inflation-adjusted prices decreasing as opposed to increasing. Ehrlich chose copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. The bet was formalized on September 29, 1980, with September 29, 1990, as the payoff date. Ehrlich lost the bet, as all five commodities that were bet on declined in price from 1980 through 1990, the wager period.

No more snow; London and NYC underwater no later than 1990/2000/2005/2010/2020 etc etc due to rising sea levels caused by melting polar ice caps/glaciers; nonexistent global warming; the hoary old “peak oil” myth; unbreathable air; acid rain; mass starvation across the developed world; killing floods, drought, tornadoes, and hurricanes all inexorably worsening, year after year; calamitous shortages, scarcity, impoverishment, famine, and war—only shitlib Chicken Littles could be wrong again and again and again about absolutely everything, and yet still unblushingly insist that they’re the smartest people in the room anyhow…no matter what room they happen to be in at the time.

Funny, innit, how all these disparate problems always seem to have the selfsame solution: more government, less freedom, more sacrifice and deprivation, more want. For YOU, that is, not for them. Never them, perish the thought. Why, one could almost be forgiven for wondering whether they might be wrong about that, too. But nah, that couldn’t be, it’s unpossible. Right?

RIGHT?!?

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“This isn’t science. It’s fraud”

Quelle surprise.

With only 9 months of reporting data, NOAA was already able to announce “Hottest Year Ever.” But to be fair, they knew well in advance that their data would show 2023 to be the hottest year ever, not only because NOAA “adjusts” much of the data they gather, but even more shockingly, because they fabricate much of the rest of the data inputs from decommissioned stations!

Meteorologist John Shewchuk has been researching NOAA’s hundreds of “ghost stations.” These are climate stations that were once in operation, but aren’t any longer. They might have been removed, or maybe they just quit operating and were never repaired, but NOAA continues to fabricate estimate temperature data for these formerly operational stations.

It gets even worse. As I’ll show in just a moment, aside from the fabricated reports from the USHCN ghost stations, NOAA adjusts the actual readings from stations that are still functioning, to support the climate hoax.

The table immediately below from the Belle Glade station is much simpler to read than it looks, and it reveals both types of fraud that NOAA is committing: 1) the adjustment of temperature data; and 2) the fabrication of temperature data.

In blue is the actual Raw data produced by the Belle Glade station until it went dark in 2005. Each row represents a year, for instance the first year is 2000. The 12 numbers that follow are the 12 average monthly temperatures for that station, shown as Celsius x 100. Therefore, the average temperature in January 2000 was 25.12° Celsius. In February 2000 the average temperature was 25.50° Celsius. (-9999 means that no reading was recorded.)

Below that table in red is the official NOAA temperature data, where two things stand out.

1) NOAA has adjusted the actual Raw data. That 25.12°C temperature for January 2000 was warmed up to 25.21°C. February 2000 was similarly adjusted from 25.50°C to 25.60°C.

2) Despite Belle Glade going offline in 2005, NOAA continues to report temperature data for that imaginary station. The “E” by the temperature indicates that this is an estimated temperature, however, that estimate is still included in the official temperature record.

With NOAA’s history of anti-scientific fraud, it should be assumed at this point that any data NOAA publishes is a fabrication.

My previous documentation of NOAA’s fraud was the progenitor of a commenter’s quote that gave birth to Throckmorton’s Razor and Minuteman’s Corollary:

Throckmorton’s Razor: “Assume that any authority which has previously provided false data is always acting dishonestly.”

Minuteman’s Corollary: “Discount everything a liar says in his argument, even if it may support your position.”

NOAA has so thoroughly compromised its integrity with its pattern of politically motivated fraud, that not only do I not believe its reporting of temperatures or tropical storm wind speeds any longer, but I don’t even trust it to accurately report the dew point. Every piece of weather data produced by NOAA should be assumed to be fraudulent.

It most certainly should, right along with any and every other syllable shat forth from any and every FederalGovCo “scientist,” “expert,” or spokescritter’s filthy maw. It’s a sad, sorry state of affairs, and an awful fix for Real Americans to find themselves in, but it also happens to be the plain and simple truth.

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2

The “climate change” Trojan Horse

In this as in everything else, it’s never really about what they tell you it is.

I have thoroughly debunked the idea of man-made climate change in previous articles and I won’t be spending time on that here. Instead, I want to examine the end goal of climate change policies – The ultimate solution, which is NOT to save the planet, but to dominate the populace.

The names used for the climate change “reset” vary, but it is often referred to by globalists and the UN as Agenda 2030 or Sustainable Development Goals. These programs wear a facade of environmentalism but they are ALL rooted in economics. That is to say, all climate change efforts exist to destroy industry and trade and establish a government/corporate partnership to dominate production. Climate change is a Trojan Horse to introduce authoritarianism.

I believe one of the most important aspects of Agenda 2030 for globalists is something called the “15 Minute City”; a project which involves hundreds of city mayors from across the US, Europe and Asia working closely with groups like the World Economic Forum. Any mention of this idea in a negative light and the media erupts with anger as well as mockery as if it’s not a real issue worthy of debate.

The establishment paints an interesting picture of 15 Minute Cities – A Utopian future in which everything you need is only a short walk away and private transportation is superfluous (or banned). You might even live in mega-complex, much like a giant mall where you also work. You could spend months within one square mile of space, never having to leave for anything.

It’s no mistake that this idea was pushed hard during the pandemic lockdowns. The public was awash in fear propaganda over a virus with a 99.8% survival rate and that fear made the unthinkable idea of staying at home all the time suddenly thinkable. Media pundits continue to call the connection between covid lockdowns and climate lockdowns a conspiracy theory, but the idea is openly admitted in UN and WEF white papers.

Some people argue that most cities are already “15 Minute Cities” with necessities all within walking distance of their homes. These folks don’t understand what a 15 Minute City really is. As numerous establishment descriptions of the project note, it’s not just about convenience or close access, it’s about changing every aspect of our current philosophy of living. It’s not about gaining amenities, it’s about making an array of sacrifices in order to appease the gods of carbon emissions.

The 15 Minute City is more like a recipe, containing every single ingredient of the climate change and covid lockdown agendas in a single comprehensive Orwellian vision. It includes removing motor vehicles, removing private transportation and roads, smart city and AI monitoring of each person’s electricity usage, monitoring of product consumption and “carbon footprint”, biometric surveillance within a compact and stacked urban landscape, the cashless society concept, equity and inclusion cultism, population control, etc.

It is the culmination, the end game; a massive prison with no bars. A place where you are conditioned to grow accustomed to artificial limitations on privacy, no civil liberties, no private property, and no work options or mobility. You are tied to the land and the land is owned by the state (or corporation). If you want a historic comparison, the closest I can find is the feudal system of Medieval Europe.

It’s important to understand that these compact cities will not be designed for your comfort. They will not be designed so that you can have all the amenities you have today closer to your fingertips while also providing “sustainability.” That’s how the globalists try to sell it, but that’s not what it will be. Rather, these cities will be designed to better CONTROL you, so that you can be forced to make the sacrifices they say are necessary for sustainability to be possible.

They are erroneously billed as “decentralized communities,” but they are the exact opposite – They are utterly centralized, like a hamster cage where you are the pet. The core philosophy behind them is dependency. If you live in a place which is specifically constructed to eliminate your ability to provide for yourself, then you are a slave. Though, to be sure, even slavery can be made to look noble if people are convinced that their chains are necessary for the good of the planet.

Thanks to these bloated, endlessly grabby, monstrously-powerful governments, the world becomes a scarier, more threatening place with every passing day, don’t it? Why, it’s almost as if the Founding Fathers actually knew whereof they spoke when they so vehemently warned future generations against the dangers of permitting their central goobermint to outgrow the box it originally came in or something.

Lisa Liberal splutters hysterically: but…but…but…HOW COULD THEY POSSIBLY HAVE FORESEEN (fully semi-automatic assault weapon riflepistol guns at every WalMart, available for purchase by any man, woman, or child with no background check, waiting period, permit, or registration required AT ALL, EVER/unlimited-capacity self-reloading magazine clips/Cop Killer bullets/shoulder thingy that goes up/heat-seeking .50 caliber incendiary rounds/GAIA-raping ICE automobiles/rural electrification/deadly gas ranges/insert Leftard bugbear of the month HERE)?!?

1

Sticker shock

Just another nail in the EV coffin.

The true cost of an EV? Think tank claims subsidies for electric vehicles cost $50,000 PER CAR over a ten-year period
The true cost of electric cars to the average American taxpayer has been laid bare by a landmark new study into the eco vehicles.

In order to bring EVs to market, governments have created a variety of tax incentives for buyers and manufacturers. They have also sponsored the development of the infrastructure needed to charge them.

But those subsidies can come at a cost to taxpayers, buyers of gas vehicles or simply households that pay electricity bills.

A new paper by conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation estimated that the average electric car incurs hidden costs of $48,698 over a 10-year period.

‘Electric vehicle owners have been the beneficiaries of regulatory credits, subsidies, and socialized infrastructure costs totaling nearly $50,000 per EV,’ said one of its authors, Jason Isaac.

eparately, it found that the infrastructure required to facilitate electric cars in America is not paid for directly by the owner of the car. It described those expenses as ‘socialized infrastructure costs.’

‘Home and public charging stations used by EVs put a significant strain on the electric grid, resulting in an average of $11,833 in socialized costs per EV over 10 years, which are shouldered by utility ratepayers and taxpayers,’ read the paper.

The authors argued that the gasoline infrastructure is used for other products and society at large, whereas electric vehicle charging costs currently only serve EV owners.

They also claimed that the additional strain placed on the power grid when charging electric cars would ordinarily incur ‘demand charges’ – or a premium for higher energy consumption at a certain time.

‘Currently, most utilities are socializing that cost for EV owners by not assessing demand charges on residential EV chargers, even though those chargers can use as much power at certain times as several homes,’ the report claimed.

Right up until the useless Wokester toy blows up and burns the house to cinders and ash.

So let’s see, now:

  • Random explosions;
  • Random deadly fires;
  • Hours wasted searching for and/or sitting in long, slow charging-station queues;
  • Yet more hours wasted “refueling” enough to at least maybe make it back home;
  • Unsatisfactory, grossly-exaggerated range;
  • Ruinously expensive battery replacement;
  • Total reliance on those horrible, horrible coal-fired power plants;
  • Drastically-shortened tire, hub-bearing, suspension, brake, and/or steering-component life due to the vehicle’s excessive weight;
  • Exorbitant towing charges when the PoS boat-anchor leaves you stranded;
  • Inability to enjoy battery-exsanguinating ”luxury” accessories including but not limited to heat, defrost, A/C, stereo, wipers, &c;
  • Ditto for carrying passengers;
  • Ditto for hauling loads or towing even a lightweight trailer with your electric pickup truck;
  • Don’t EVER touch ANYTHING under the hood or attempt to fix anything yourself, OR YOU MAY DIE

OOH-OOH-OOH I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANT ONE!

What the heck, whoever said virtue-signaling came cheap, right? Them’s the breaks. All of which I’d be okay with; hey, if smug, self-righteous Enviro-nut assholes don’t mind paying through the nose to establish their presumed moral-superiority bona-fides, well then you just have at it, fools. Unfortunately, though, we ALL get to pay for their dubious “privilege” right along with ‘em. To wit:

But the largest cost identified by the report was that on buyers of gas cars.

According to the paper, around 16 states have ‘zero emission vehicle’ (ZEV) mandates whereby the state sets a number or percentage of new vehicles sold that must be zero-emission.

‘Of course, the cost to meet these mandates is not limited to the states that impose them but spread out over the entire fleet of each automaker trying to meet them,’ read the paper.

On top of that, federal regulations impose similar obligations on automakers that incentivize them to make more electric vehicles.

‘The largest source of financial support for EVs comes not from direct subsidies but from hidden costs driven by federal regulations,’ read the paper.

‘The Biden administration’s stringent fuel economy standards and regulatory manipulations are driving American automakers toward bankruptcy and adding thousands of dollars to the cost of every gasoline vehicle,’ said Brent Bennett, another of the paper’s authors.

Just this month, Ford said during its third quarter earnings call that it lost an estimated $36,000 on each electric car it sold in the quarter.

Well, whaddya know about that: look closely enough, dig down far enough, and we learn that, of course and as always, the real problem has its roots deep within the bowels of the meddlesome, authoritarian Leviathan-state. Quelle surprise, that.

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