- Not quite the point: Statista notes that between June 2022 and June 2023 between 8 and 13% of the population in various advanced countries participated in climate-related protests. “While these figures may sound low,” they note, “according to a study published in 2011 of campaigns of nonviolent civil resistance between 1900 and 2006, ‘no government can withstand a challenge of 3.5 percent of its population without either accommodating the movement or (in extreme cases) disintegrating.’” Except if the protestors demand unpopular and impossible things, and then when the government tries to do them the rest of the public promptly votes them out.
- From the “celibacy suddenly sounds better” file, we’re told that “Research has revealed that eating grasshoppers (Ruspolia nitidula) can improve your sex drive.” So apparently the real Net Zero agenda, with its recurring fixation on getting rid of beef in favour of insect protein, has erotic appeal. But look: while we don’t claim to have been Casanovas even in our now somewhat distant youth, we just can’t get behind the slogan “Nothing says romance like a bowl of bugs.”
- Signs of the times: Scientific American has endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 U.S. Presidential election while the Teamster’s union has not. News stories made much of the fact that it’s only the second endorsement in that publication’s 179 years, so not even Lincoln or FDR got the nod. However they downplayed that the other one was Joe Biden, meaning SA has succumbed to the childish partisanship wrecking so many things in our society including science, as even a writer in The Atlantic complained. Naturally it is possible that the magazine is right and the union wrong; many would argue that the Teamsters’ long history of backing Democrats (like that of the New York Times) was mistaken. But it does underline the extent to which climate alarmism is a luxury belief, while the consequences of actual Net Zero policies are driving away workers throughout the formerly industrialized world. Indeed the union apparently endorsed nobody because its members, in an internal survey, favoured Trump by almost two to one, shocking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, not exactly representative of the classic blue-collar swing voter. Whereas the staff of Scientific American, we imagine, broke about 97%-3% for Harris.
- From the settled science file we hear that our own planet might once have had one of those cool rings like those long admired on Saturn and later discovered on the other gas giants. If they’re right, it formed long long ago, before the dinosaurs, and crashed to Earth within a few tens of millions of years (yes, geologists talk like that) and, the authors say, “We further speculate that shading of Earth by this ring may have triggered cooling into the Hirnantian global icehouse period.” So the more we learn about paleoclimate the less CO2 drives it.
- Also from that file, apparently “The Sun Is Stranger Than Astrophysicists Imagined”. And to be honest, the sun is quite strange once you stop taking for granted that such a thing would exist at just the right distance and temperature and so forth to sustain life, complex organic life no less, on our strange planet with its strange moon and moon-driven tides. But the point here is that “The sun radiates far more high-frequency light than expected, raising questions about unknown features of the sun’s magnetic field and the possibility of even more exotic physics.” And also whether those who breezily dismissed the sun’s impact on climate since they know it’s CO2 so any evidence to the contrary is unworthy might perhaps exhibit a bit more humility and curiosity. And stop telling us the science on climate is “settled”. It is not geometric optics. It is a complex mix of physics, chemistry, geology and many other disciplines including, yes, history, and surprises keep turning up.
- Inside Climate News tries to fact-check Donald Trump’s debate statement “Germany tried that”, claiming that “For German audiences or anyone who has followed Germany’s decades-long push to move away from fossil fuels and nuclear power, Trump’s comments made little sense.” Oh really? Germans say, do they? Because in Unherd one Ralph Schoellhammer (technically Austrian, but certainly German-speaking and a keen observer of things German) warns that Germany “may be witnessing not just a regular economic downturn, but the degrading of the very structures needed for any future recovery. To symbolise this point, this week a bridge in the city of Dresden collapsed just minutes after a tram crossed it, thereby narrowly avoiding a fatal disaster… yet another example of Germany no longer living up to its reputation of being a well-run and efficient country…. the country has been steadily falling behind in rankings measuring international competitiveness, especially due to a deterioration of its infrastructure…. Looming above it all are high energy costs, making life especially hard for energy-intensive industries. A lot has been written about Germany’s suicidal energy policy, but nothing has been as devastating as a recent study showing that Berlin spent €500 billion on the ‘energy transition’ towards renewables and barely has anything to show for it.” Oh. That.
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25 Sep 2024 | News Roundup
"many would argue that the Teamsters’ long history of backing Democrats ... was mistaken."
Not really. In days gone by, left-leaning parties such as the US Democrats and the Canadian NDP were very much the parties of blue collar workers. They have since dropped their blue-collar affiliations to become the parties of fashionable concerns such as wokism, gender and climate change. As a result the blue-collar vote has now largely become the province of right-wing parties such as the Republicans and Conservatives. What the Democrats and NDP/Liberals seem to have forgotten is that even in our AI-driven world there are still very large numbers of blue collar workers, and they all have a vote.