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Earlier this summer, the CO2 Coalition was banished from LinkedIn. The CO2 Coalition, with only three full-time employees and an annual budget of under $1 million, had committed the unpardonable sin of sharing contrarian perspectives on climate science. Its work, produced by a network of volunteers that includes dozens of distinguished scientists, offers indispensable balance on a topic that requires honest debate now more than ever.
Among the many comments that followed LinkedIn’s decision, the mentality of the climate crisis mob came through loud and clear. If “the science is settled,” then any contrary perspective is dangerous and must be silenced. A typical comment: “Why does LinkedIn allow so much Climate Disinformation to persist throughout its platform?” Brigades of these content wardens continuously log complaints with LinkedIn against climate skeptics. The impeccable work of Bjorn Lomborg is one of their next targets.
This is not the environmentalism of previous generations, and this new zealotry does not negate or diminish the common sense concern for the environment that most reasonable people share. But this new breed of intolerant, fanatical environmentalism, manifested in the movement to avert a “climate crisis,” is perhaps the most virulent and dangerous expression of fascism in America today. If left unchecked, this fascistic climate change movement will destroy freedom and prosperity while it destroys the planet it purportedly wants to save.
Ideological and Economic Fascism Combined
This is not a frivolous accusation because, in this case, the shoe fits. There are two types of […] Read More
Proponents of desalination tout its potential to quench the thirst of a water-deprived civilization. The logic is compelling. If fresh water is in short supply, why not remove the salt from the vast oceans? With an estimated volume of 1.1 million billion acre feet (an acre foot is the amount of water volume that would cover one acre, one foot deep) of seawater, there will always be enough ocean.
For all its potential, desalination has yet to be a game changer. Worldwide freshwater consumption is estimated at 7.5 billion acre feet per year. Of that total, roughly 20,000 desalination plants worldwide produce an estimated 30 million acre feet of fresh water per year. That’s an awful lot of water, but it’s less than 1 percent of global water consumption.
Nonetheless, desalination plays an outsized role in arid coastal regions around the world. In Israel, for example, five massive desalination plants on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea produce nearly a half-million acre feet of fresh water per year, an amount the nation plans to double by 2030. Israel’s Sorek Desalination Plant, located a few miles south of Tel Aviv, produces 185,000 acre feet of fresh water per year, from a highly automated operation that occupies only about 25 acres. Approximately 80 percent of Israel’s municipal water comes from desalination, and this nation of 9 million people […] Read More
It is of course impossible to predict who will win the Democrat and GOP nominations to run for president in 2024. With 27 months to go, nobody saw Bill Clinton coming, or Barack Obama, or Donald Trump. Black swan events (2020) and dark horse candidates (1996, 2008, 2016) are the rule, not the exception. But if one must make a prediction today, Donald Trump vs Gavin Newsom would be a good bet.
This matchup presents a challenge for conservatives. The weight of every powerful American institution will be even more devoted to crushing a Trump candidacy than they were in 2020, and the pressure on independents and even Republicans to disavow Trump will be unrelenting. And yet the alternative, Gavin Newsom, is unthinkable. He will do to America what he’s done to California.
The reasons California succeeds at all in the 21st century are in spite of Newsom, not because of him. It has the best weather on earth, a diverse economy, tech leadership, and an infrastructure built in the 1950s and 1960s which, though strained nearly to the breaking point by 30 years of negligence, still provides enough of a foundation to support 40 million residents.
Newsom’s legacy offers nothing that builds on the impressive accomplishments of previous generations of Californians. His political partners are public sector unions, who collect and spend over $1.0 billion in dues every year and use it to enforce single party rule, along with “green” nonprofits that wield staggering wealth and influence, along with […] Read More
For four days last month, independent truckers blockaded the Port of Oakland, preventing goods from entering or leaving. Threats of arrest, along with the possibility of personal liability stemming from a lawsuit filed against the protesters by the Port of Oakland were sufficient to bring the blockade to an end. But the reasons for the protest have not gone away.
California’s trucking industry already faced difficult challenges complying with the state’s strict environmental laws. A recent ruling by the California Air Resources Board requires semi-trucks and other diesel commercial vehicles to have engines built in 2010 or newer by 2023. Under this new regulation, an estimated 40,000 trucks in California will have to be retrofit by next year. For independent truckers who own their vehicles and survive on thin margins, this is going to put them out of business. Thanks to the shortage of semi-conductors, there is a shortage of new engines and compliant trucks, making a costly investment even more expensive. The rising cost of diesel fuel has also put a financial strain on truckers.
And now on top of that, California’s 70,000 independent truckers are being hit with enforcement of AB 5, which has redefined “independent contractor.” Under the new criteria, most independent truckers will not be able to qualify. They will be forced to sell their trucks and either retire from the business, or drive as an employee of a shipping company.
For a while, AB 5, passed in the fall of 2019, didn’t […] Read More
For a while, the internet was an unambiguously revolutionary phenomenon. Everyone could broadcast truth to the world. But as the internet became ubiquitous, and with the more recent impact of social media and broadband, what had been a revolution is becoming a coopted new manifestation of establishment power. The modern internet is a propagandist’s dream. Perpetual internet access to an infinite audience and infinite content has altered the human psyche, making it easier than ever to manipulate the beliefs and passions of entire populations. Control of this interaction by a small handful of mega corporations in Silicon Valley has given those companies almost indescribable power.
The ironic surprise in all this is how Silicon Valley’s tech companies have used their power. They have embraced a reactionary politics, reflected in who they promote and who they erase. What online behaviors they reward, and where they direct the herd. To understand why Silicon Valley’s big tech companies have become reactionaries, one must understand how the American Left – which includes the overwhelming majority of big tech company employees and founders – has over the past 10-20 years moved from opposing corporate globalization to fully endorsing it. This shift, gradual but steady, came into the open with the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
The Populist Uprising Against Globalism
Donald Trump’s heresy was to focus on the negative impact globalism was having on Americans. He catalyzed a revolution by challenging what had become truisms for the establishment—trade deficits don’t matter or […] Read More
Negotiations between the Manhattan Beach Firefighters Association and the Manhattan Beach City Council have been stalled since May, when an impasse was announced. As reported in a local publication serving Manhattan Beach and nearby cities, firefighters and their supporters packed a July 19 city council meeting to urge the council to alter its stance in labor negotiations.
In the article, “Firefighters from Manhattan Beach and their supporters storm City Hall,” some of the firefighter union’s positions were noted. One of them was for the firefighters to receive “the same cost of living salary increases the other city unions received over the last 3.5 years, a period during with MBFA has not received an increase.”
In that regard, it would be useful to report what full time firefighters with the Manhattan Beach Fire Department earned in 2021, using data downloaded from the State Controller’s website.
A few things should be called out in the above chart. First – the employee compensation data the City of Manhattan Beach reported to the State Controller did not include any allocation of the payment the city makes towards the unfunded pension liability. This means the numbers you see in the “pension” column are for the so-called “normal cost” and therefore no argument can be made that they are inflated. One could make the argument that since no allocation whatsoever is made to active duty firefighter compensation to account for the city’s substantial unfunded pension debt, the average per firefighter […] Read More
The following was posted on social media recently by a widely respected California-based journalist:
“I don’t like being an alarmist but the epidemic of misinformation is becoming critical and increasingly dangerous. It was bad enough when we had a lying POTUS but it is now clear that it’s become a political tactic of a large part of one of our main political parties. And, if one major party can get away with mass lying, so can the other one, so I fear this will spread across ideological boundaries.”
It’s fair to say this reflects a majority opinion among journalists throughout the American media, and it invites a response. This journalist accuses “one of our main political parties” of engaging in “mass lying,” obviously referring to the Republicans and obviously blind to the lies promulgated by the Democrats.
The biggest lie allegedly spread by Republicans, now called “The Big Lie,” is to claim the 2020 election was illegitimate. But even if the 2020 election was not compromised due to a relentlessly hostile and partisan media, endless political persecution designed to damage Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, voting rules that were violated and manipulated in swing states, Zuckerbucks, and possibly much more, this assertion still isn’t a Republican “lie.” For better or for worse, there are diverse opinions within the ranks of Republicans. Some think it was a stolen election; others don’t.
But no such dissent exists among Democrats over some of the biggest lies ever told.
The lies Democrats unanimously […] Read More
AUDIO: In the face of unprecedented cuts to available water, California cannot possibly conserve its way out of water scarcity. Fortunately there are a variety of solutions that would create water abundance, if the special interests that profit from scarcity can be exposed and overcome. Edward Ring with host Will Swaim on the National Review’s Radio Free California.
The 25 minute segment on water begins 1:24:00 into the podcast.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/special-episode-solutions-to-three-california-crises-235/id1272856118?i=1000574739251
AUDIO: High density housing is not an inevitable byproduct of adapting to climate change or achieving an environmentally sustainable civilization. There is plenty of room and there are plenty of resources. But the high density agenda is pushed by special interests that gain power and profit when density mandates artificially inflate the cost of housing. Edward Ring with Kara McKinney on Tipping Point.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/july-27-2022-edward-ring-lance-lorusso-andrea-kaye/id1547483529?i=1000571469884
As Californians cope with another blistering summer during what is their third consecutive year of drought, the state legislature has still done nothing of substance to upgrade California’s water supply infrastructure. From the Klamath Basin on the Oregon border to the Imperial Valley on the Mexican border, farmers can’t irrigate their crops, and in every major city, residents are having their access to water rationed.
Not only is California’s state legislature and various state and federal agencies failing to invest in new water infrastructure, but they are actively undermining attempts to deliver more water to the state’s residents. In May, the California Coastal Commission denied a permit to Poseidon Water to build a desalination plant that would have produced 60,000 acre feet of water per year.
If desalination is the irredeemable problem child of water infrastructure according to environmentalists, surface reservoirs are its evil cousin. Hence the proposed Sites Reservoir, which would provide another 1.5 million acre feet of badly needed storage capacity, still faces what may be insurmountable odds: the requirement to allocate half of its yield to ecosystems means the remaining water the Sites Project Authority will be permitted to sell to cites and farmers may not be sufficient to qualify the project for construction loan guarantees.
The environmentalist assault on California’s water enabled civilization, unchallenged by the state legislature, is full spectrum. On the Klamath River, with an urgency that is entirely missing with respect to constructing the Sites Reservoir, or any other reservoirs, plans to remove […] Read More
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