“…The air-quality lawsuits were the work of a small group known in English as Environment Action Germany, which goes by the German acronym DUH, and is funded mainly by donations from Germany’s central and regional governments (and Toyota).

It doesn’t help that DUH was itself once a proselytizer for “clean diesel,” even pushing the technology on U.S. environmental groups as a quicker way to bring down carbon-dioxide emissions than waiting for electric cars to catch on.

Diesel does deliver a tad less CO2 per mile than gasoline but produces more smog and particulates, a detractor that turned out not to be fixable. Remember the Volkswagen scandal of 2015, when U.S. regulators ended the charade by discovering that emissions from imported VWs were 400% worse than advertised?

To this day, though, nobody in Europe is willing to acknowledge the biggest flaw in the continent’s now-defunct regulatory fetish for diesel.

However you slice it, cars just aren’t that big a part of an ostensible CO2 problem. Personal cars sit idle 95% of the time. Planes, trains, ships, trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles account for well over half the emissions associated with the transport sector globally. And the transport sector itself accounts for only 14% of all emissions.

Now for the knee-jerk response from groups like Union of Concerned Scientists: Yes, but road-vehicle emissions are a significant share of total emissions in the U.S. and Europe.

This is a perfect example of the politics of the meaningless gesture, the dominant motif in climate policy. The planet doesn’t care where the emissions happen. The U.S. and Europe could ban driving altogether and it wouldn’t make a sizable difference. For real leverage over CO2, the target has to be heavy industry, electricity generation, and home heating and cooking.

So why the car obsession? It’s a mental legacy of the air-pollution fights of the 1970s. To many voters, the car remains a sinful object. Eco groups, for purposes of self-promotion, can’t go wrong by portraying themselves as fighting against the automobile. Yet they get virtually nowhere on the alleged problem of CO2 by doing so…”

Original

NAACP blames ‘white supremacy’ for Portland earthquake signs.

Headline from the education apocalypse

“…Kieran Bhattacharya was suspended from the University of Virginia after the institution alleged Bhattacharya became “unnecessarily antagonistic and disrespectful” during a lecture Bhattacharya says was titled “Microaggressions: Why Are They So Sensitive.”

Bhattacharya published audio recordings, both of the classroom incident that led to his suspension, and of the following disciplinary hearing that led to his suspension.

In the classroom recording, as the lecture concluded and students are allowed to ask questions at approximately 28 minutes in, Bhattacharya took the opportunity to raise several concerns with the professor. . . .

Bhattacharya says he was then summoned by the University of Virginia’s Academic Standards and Achievement Committee for punishment.

During the half hour long meeting, Bhattacharya repeatedly asked what about his behavior was incorrect, and how to remedy it. He was criticized for his decision to record the lecture, and repeatedly told that his “this aggressive, threatening behavior” must be changed.

After repeatedly asking for examples of his unprofessional behavior, one committee member suggested his decision to record the meeting as an example…”

Original

Late stage socialism:

“…“I’ve decided to leave Venezuela to disavow the government of Nicolas Maduro,” Zerpa said in an interview with EVTV, which is broadcast over cable and the internet.

“I believe (Maduro) does not deserve a second chance because the election he supposedly won was not free and competitive.”

The Supreme Court confirmed in a statement that he had fled, referring to him as a former magistrate and adding it opened an investigation of him in November over accusations of sexual harassment by women in his office. The court’s leadership recommended that he be dismissed over the allegations, it said, without providing details.

Zerpa was for years a crucial ally of Maduro on the Supreme Court, which has backed the ruling Socialist Party in every major legal dispute since Maduro’s 2013 election.

He wrote a 2016 ruling that provided the legal justification for Maduro’s government to strip congress of most of its powers after the Socialist Party lost control of the body to the opposition in a landslide election…”

Original

This peak is visible on the far horizon just right of center in the previous photograph titled Yosemite Backcountry.

Jerry Brown tells Chuck Todd, “We’ve got to get off this idea, ‘it’s the economy, stupid.’ No, it’s the environment.”

Related:

Of The 5 Big States, Texas #1 For Growth, California #1 For Poverty.

Is it a cartoon?

Christopher Bedford:

“…The Never Trumpers say they don’t recognize a Republican Party where the core tenets are neither free trade nor foreign democracy promotion. But maybe they just didn’t know their voters by sight, because the only party that has truly departed recognition is Never Trump.

Each week brings this movement a new and bizarre position: Opposing tax cuts, supporting Obamacare; wishing North Korean talks ill, wishing Democratic investigators well; dreaming of European political meddling, pining for American political comeuppance.

Rick Santorum, the Catholic working-class firebrand rarely seen among Washington’s polite classes, had long commented that a party such as the GOP, with a donor class so out of line with its base, could not possibly continue to function.

There could not be such a massive realignment without something somewhere snapping, but despite the Never Trump hysteria, it doesn’t appear to be the party. Though the president’s House was defeated in the first post-Trump national elections and his two-year approval among Democrats lies at historic lows, his approval with his own voters—those who the Never Trumpers courted not long ago—is second only to George W. Bush after 9/11…”

Original

Thomas Lifson:

“…Anger and downright hatred for the sitting president of the United States powers most of the 40 newly elected members of the House Democratic Caucus, along with many veterans, including “Mad Max” Maxine Waters, slated to become chair of the House Financial Services Committee and very publicly committed to impeachment.  Pelosi is shrewd enough to realize that impeachment without a smoking gun would be a disaster for Democrats, but that won’t stop the Trump-haters, who believe they have momentum and support of the party’s faithful.  Eleven-term veteran Congressman Brad Sherman, of Ventura County, California, has already introduced articles of impeachment, and that’s just the beginning of the ordeal Pelosi will have trying to rein in her crazies.

Those crazies include another media darling, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who chose Palestinian garb in which to take the oath of office, no doubt simultaneously pleasing the 19% of the American public that chooses to support the Palestinians over Israel, as well as the Republican Jewish Coalition.  (See what I mean about the clown show now?)…”

Original

He might be a good choice.

“…Jim Webb, the iconoclastic former Democratic senator from Virginia who served as Ronald Reagan’s secretary of the Navy, is under consideration for Defense secretary, according to an administration official with knowledge of the process.

Webb would be an eye-opening choice as a member of the opposing party who briefly ran for president in 2015.

But his views on foreign policy and military affairs align with President Donald Trump in key respects. For example, he ran for the Senate in 2006 on a platform to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, even campaigning while wearing his Marine son’s combat boots…”

Original

“…The dossier operation has not only damaged institutions like the FBI and DOJ, it has also poisoned the public sphere, perhaps irremediably. As a result, it is now accepted journalistic practice to print, and reprint, any garish fantasy so long as it’s layered with Russian intrigue and Trump team treason. Even as the rest of the country sees an institution that has made itself a laughingstock, the press continues to salute itself for its bravery—or the courage and industry required to take leaks from law enforcement and intelligence officials and Democratic operatives in an effort to topple a president it doesn’t like, elected by neighbors it holds in contempt…”

Original

From Ed Driscoll:

GLOBAL WARMING IS IMPACTING PEOPLE FROM HEAD TO TOE AND EVERYWHERE IN BETWEEN. JUST ASK NBC!

● Shot: ‘Climate grief’: The growing emotional toll of climate change — Extreme weather and dire climate reports are intensifying the mental health effects of global warming: depression and resignation about the future.

—Headline and subhead, NBC News, Christmas Eve.

● Chaser: NBC Blasted For ‘Worst New Year’s Show Ever’; Included ‘Vaginal Steaming’ Comment.

—The Daily Wire, today.

Paul Bedard:

‘…President Trump has made good and then some on his pledge to slash costly federal regulations, issuing the fewest new rules in recorded history in his first two years, according to a new analysis.

In fact, the efforts by the White House, Office of Management and Budget, and several agencies to cut and reduce the flow of regulations this year have only ever been topped once: by the same Trump team last year.

“At year-end 2018, how is President Donald Trump’s regulatory reform project going? Better than Obama, Bush II, and Clinton in terms of fewer regulations; but not as good as Trump’s own first year,” said the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

CEI regulations guru Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. said in a year-end report provided in advance to Secrets that Trump ended the year with 3,367 new regulations. That is the lowest since records were first kept in the 1970s.

But Crews noted that Trump’s number of new regulations is lower. The reason: the government requires a “regulation” to kill a regulation, and Trump is continuing on his promise to kill two regulations for every new one he proposes. . . .

In what Crews has dubbed the “Unconstitutionality Index,” Trump has has also slashed the percentage of new rules to new laws passed by Congress and signed by Trump, he wrote in a second report issued Monday…”

Original