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This graph from the recent issue of Science Magazine shows 1.6 million years of alternating warm and cold periods in the recent geologic past. For me the importance of this data, which was generated from ocean sediment cores, is the time frames involved, and the number of glacial and interglacial periods. Also the fact that, though man was on earth during this interval, the Earth manged to get cold and warm in alternating cycles all by itself. Some scientists and many media personalities now think we can fully understand the global processes involved in these cycles of climate sufficient to predict, and reverse engineer the next warm period. This highlights for me the conceit and folly of man.
Michael Walsh:
At this point, it’s hard to tell:
Pope Francis wants concrete action to combat the “emergency” of plastics littering seas and oceans. Francis made the appeal in a message Saturday to galvanize Christians and others to work to save what he hails as the “marvelous,” God-given gift of the “great waters and all they contain.” He said efforts to fight plastics litter must be waged “as if everything depended on us.”
The pope also denounced as “unacceptable” the privatization of water resources at the expense of the “human right to have access to this good.” Environmental protection is a priority of his papacy.
Francis urged politicians to apply “farsighted responsibility” and generosity in dealing with climate change, as well migration policies including about those who “risk their lives at sea in search of a better future.”
“…Nice job of working in “refugees” and “migrants” into the remarks as well. Seriously, given the enormous crisis of faith the Catholic laity is currently experiencing, is this really what’s on the Pope’s mind?
Come back, Benedict, your Church needs you…”
“…VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis wants concrete action to combat the “emergency” of plastics littering seas and oceans.
Francis made the appeal in a message Saturday to galvanize Christians and others to work to save what he hails as the “marvelous,” God-given gift of the “great waters and all they contain.”
He said efforts to fight plastics litter must be waged “as if everything depended on us.”
The pope also denounced as “unacceptable” the privatization of water resources at the expense of the “human right to have access to this good.”
Environmental protection is a priority of his papacy…”
“…Remember the good old days of politics? You know, when politicians used to promise a chicken in every pot? In California, which has the nation’s highest poverty when factoring in cost-of-living, human feces lining the streets of its second largest city, the second-highest cost of living and the tenth highest tax burden in the country, they don’t worry about chicken. Their priority is shielding illegal immigrants from law enforcement, free health care for all, and now trying to run corporate America. The state is mandating that there be a woman in every boardroom.
On Wednesday, lawmakers in the Marxist sanctuary state of California passed a measure mandating at least one woman be placed on the board of every publicly-traded company in the state by the end of next year. Failure to comply with the edict will be punished with a hefty fine — $100,000 for the first offense and $300,000 for subsequent offenses…”
“…The longest-serving Democratic member of the Federal Election Commission, expected to take over as chair in four months, and her top staffer are behind an anti-Trump and anti-GOP crusade, according to a new report from a critic.
In a series of blog posts, the Republican National Lawyers Association questioned the fairness of Commissioner Ellen Weintraub and her counsel, Tom Moore, and compared the attacks on Trump to the bias FBI officials showed to President Trump…”
I left Facebook because they censored me. Facebook is biased against conservative viewpoints. Evidence in media reports indicate this is true beyond doubt.
“…A third of conservatives surveyed have ditched Facebook or are thinking about doing so, according to a poll released Wednesday.
Commissioned by the Media Research Center (MRC), which tracks liberal bias in news coverage, the survey of 1,000 likely voters has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent and of 5.2 percent for conservatives.
In addition to the 32 percent of self-described conservatives who said they have left or are considering leaving Facebook due to political censorship, 66 percent agreed they do not trust the social media platform, according to the poll.
Another 65 percent of those surveyed said they believe Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are purposely censoring conservatives and conservative voices.
“These numbers are devastating to any CEO responsible for addressing the concerns of his customer base,” Media Research Center President Brent Bozell said in a statement. “According to this survey, 7 percent of conservatives have already left Facebook and another 25 percent are seriously considering it.”…”
“…The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 4.2% in the second quarter — more than the initial estimate of 4.1%, according to the Commerce Department.
Why it matters: The upward revision marks the economy’s best performance in four years, as Reuters reports, thanks to a boost in corporate spending and a decline in imports…”
https://www.axios.com/us-gdp-second-quarter-42-e297c718-bb48-41e9-a59b-6e0b459dfa80.html
What could go wrong?
“…California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill on Tuesday which will eliminate bail for suspects arrested on all but the most violent felonies, reports the Sacramento Bee. Eligible suspects will be let go within 12 hours of booking, according to the new legislation, which can be extended another 12 hours if officials need more time to determine whether suspects should be held for other reasons…”
Jim Brown was a champion as a football player. He is a champion as a man.
South Africa is going authoritarian. Disarming the population is the next step to forcing citizens to follow the government line, or else.
“…Though South Africa witnessed rising levels of economic freedom shortly after Apartheid ended in 1994, the country has taken a more interventionist path to economic development in recent years.
This situation is becoming more pronounced with the South African National Assembly recently voting 241-83 to amend the South African constitution to allow for land expropriation without compensation.
The socialist-leaning African National Congress (ANC) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) parties are leading the charge for expropriation under the banner of fixing racial disparities that have supposedly remained intact since Apartheid’s conclusion.
While land confiscation has not been officially finalized, South Africans should worry about the direction their country is going…”
And how does gun control fit into this equation?
“…Tuesday brought endless commentary and reporting on how President Trump was being utterly ridiculous and conspiratorial to accuse Google of bias in its search algorithms. Funny: Just over a year ago, in June 2017, the European Union fined the company $2.7 billion for … bias in its search algorithms.
Yes, Trump’s off-the-cuff charge focused on political bias, whereas the EU verdict (after a seven-year investigation) was about the company “systematically favoring” its own Google Shopping feature. But all the Trump-bashers who were suggesting Google would never, ever put its thumb on the scale seem to have ignored at least one elephant in the room.
As we write, the top headlines on Google News include two CNN stories: “Trump slams Google search as ‘rigged’ — but it’s not” and “Debunking Donald Trump’s latest conspiracy theory on Google.” How is the average Web surfer to trust that Google isn’t weighting those stories?
The layman has plenty of reasons to worry about political bias to which the company could be blind: Silicon Valley is a notorious progressive place (except on issues that touch its own interests, anyway), and the internal Google discussion over “dissident” engineer James Damore showed a shocking intolerance for the merest questioning of certain left-liberal pieties.
On the commercial front, Google’s power is obvious: Its algorithms can literally make or break a company — perhaps a whole industry. Google says, “We respectfully disagree with” the EU ruling that it “abused its market dominance,” but that’s not exactly a rebuttal.
We’re no fans of heavy-handed government intervention, but any free democratic society is going to frown on enormous unchecked power. It certainly seems like some kind of independent oversight is called for here…”
https://nypost.com/2018/08/28/we-should-all-be-worried-about-googles-power/
“…GET YOUR GLOBAL WARMING LAW ENFORCEMENT HERE! A new report compiled by the indefatigable Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) exposes a previously secret $50 million fund used to pay for global warming litigation by Democratic state attorneys general and their staffs.
“This is political. We have a policymaking process. They tried it and failed. So their stance is, ‘It’s not working, so we’re going to use law enforcement,’” Horner says in the report, according to LifeZette’s Brendan Kirby.
Horner uncovered, among much else, an email from a staffer to California’s Governor Moonbeam pitching the fund to staffers of the governors of Washington state and New York. The Brown aide wrote “before you gasp, please note that foundations are currently spending over $1 billion a year on climate work.”…”
https://www.lifezette.com/2018/08/new-report-exposes-global-warming-law-enforcement-for-rent/
I believe it is time for the federal government to evaluate regulations on the tech giants.
“…He’d been a talented researcher, an academic, until his friend started a small technology company. He had joined the company and helped it to grow. It eventually became so big that the company had been acquired by one of the tech giants. And so, then, was he.
He was now paid a fortune to help design the algorithms that were central to what the tech giant did. And he had signed solemn legal documents prohibiting him from speaking to me, or to anyone, about his work. But as the years passed, his concern – indeed his guilt – grew. “It’s power without responsibility.” He paused. “There’s so much power, and so little responsibility. This is not notional abstract power. This is real power about day-to-day lives. It’s both material and cultural and financial. The world has to know that this is how it works . . . There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark,” he said, quoting Hamlet a little melodramatically.”…”
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/ridiculously-complicated-algorithms/