Utopia, you are standing in it!

Mar 13, 2019 Bjørn Lomborg writes about the overheated discourse that has children taking to the streets on the advice of adults who should know better.  Overheating About Global Warming was published today at Project Syndicate.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and images.

Decades of climate-change exaggeration in the West have produced frightened children, febrile headlines, and unrealistic political promises. The world needs a cooler approach that addresses climate change smartly without scaring us needlessly and that pays heed to the many other challenges facing the planet.

Across the rich world, school students have walked out of classrooms and taken to the streets to call for action against climate change. They are inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who blasts the media and political leaders for ignoring global warming and wants us to “panic.” A global day of action is planned for March 15.

Although the students’…

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a new and longish article by Tom Bartlett about the character, achievements, and demonization of Steve Pinker. Click on the screenshot below to read it.

Let me give my own take on Pinker first. It’s no secret that I consider him a friend and admire him hugely. Among all those in the atheist-sphere with whom I’ve interacted, he’s the most empathic, the most intellectually productive, and the most thoughtful. Dawkins is a marginally better writer, but not by much. I’ve never seen Steve commit a shoddy act nor engage in ad hominem arguments. I’ve read nearly all his books (save the linguistic ones except The Language Instinct), and can’t find much to quibble with.

But people still dislike him—even hate him. This is puzzling to me as he’s a nice guy and can’t be accused of Misogyny and Nazism Through Tweeting. As best…

Impact [image credit: karbalion.com]
This time, unusually, the new Younger Dryas evidence is from way below the equator, which they believe shows that ‘the Younger Dryas climatic onset was an extreme global event’.

When UC Santa Barbara geology professor emeritus James Kennett and colleagues set out years ago to examine signs of a major cosmic impact that occurred toward the end of the Pleistocene epoch, little did they know just how far-reaching the projected climatic effect would be, says Phys.org.

“It’s much more extreme than I ever thought when I started this work,” Kennett noted. “The more work that has been done, the more extreme it seems.”

He’s talking about the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, which postulates that a fragmented comet slammed into the Earth close to 12,800 years ago, causing rapid climatic changes, megafaunal extinctions, sudden human population decrease and cultural shifts and widespread wildfires (biomass burning).

RE zealots tout rapidly increasing wind power capacity as ‘success’. Except, in Europe a dozen countries haven’t erected a single turbine during 2018, and that coincides with a massive slowdown in construction elsewhere.

As you tread your way through the following article, be sure to ignore the usual rubbish about this wind farm ‘powering’ hundreds of thousands of homes. What they meant to say, of course, is that – on those rare occasions when wind conditions are perfect – and the turbines are actually operable, heavily subsidised wind power will knock conventionally generated electricity out of the market, for a few hours at a stretch. Until calm weather sets in and coal, gas, hydro and nuclear picks up the tab, once again.

Propaganda aside, the message from the article is pretty clear: with an almost total collapse in new construction, the wind industry has had its heyday in Europe.

   Despite last-minute additions, Theresa May’s Brexit deal has again been heavily defeated in the Commons. Hence, MPs will need to consider an extension of Article 50. Meg Russell and Alan Renwick argue that for any practical purposes – including renegotiating a deal, or holding a referendum or citizens’ assembly to break the Brexit impasse – the extension previously proposed by the Prime Minister is too short. MPs may now want to press a longer extension on the government.

This week is crunch Brexit decision time for parliament. With the official exit day of 29 March just over a fortnight away, the Prime Minister has been defeated for the second time on her deal, despite some last-minute concessions. She has previously promised MPs further votes on two things: the immediate prospect of a ‘no deal’ exit, or requesting an extension to the Article 50 period. Following tonight’s defeat, MPs…