Monthly Archives: July 2019

Responsibilities

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Iran, as I write this (Monday), has rejected efforts to defuse the situation in the Arabian Gulf, a situation it has created with its piracy of and extended threats toward oil shipping in the Gulf and transiting the Strait of Hormuz.  Indeed, in response to a planned British redeployment of a couple of small combat ships to the Gulf to add to the protection of British tankers, Iran had this:

But Mr [Ali, Iranian government spokesman] Rabie warned Sunday that a European military deployment in the Gulf would be viewed as an escalation of the crisis. “Such moves under the current conditions are provocative,” he said, according to IRNA.

Thus, Iran does not want the nations trading in oil to be able to more effectively protect their shipping.  Iran demands to preserve its ability to seize those ships for itself.

This is not the action of a peace-loving nation. Piracy in the Gulf is the responsibility of Iran.

Freeze the North Pole

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…or keep it frozen.  Or add more ice to it.  Or something.

Here’s an idea:

A team of designers led by Faris Rajak Kotahatuhaha proposes re-freezing sea water in the Arctic to create miniature modular icebergs using a submarine-like vessel, in a bid to combat climate change.
The Indonesian designer worked on the prototype with collaborators Denny Lesmana Budi and Fiera Alifa for an international competition organised by the Association of Siamese Architects.

And they won a consolation prize for that.  After all, as Kotahatuhaha said,

The main goal of this idea is to restore the polar ecosystem, which has a direct effect on the balance of the global climate[.]

And here’s some of the “engineering” by which the polar ice caps and their ecosystems would be saved [emphasis added]:

The submarine-like vessel would submerge to collect sea water in a central hexagonal tank. Turbines would then be used to blast the tank with cold air and accelerate the freezing process.
… A system of reverse osmosis would be used to filter some of the salt from the water in order to speed up the process.

Eric Warrell, over at Watts Up With That?, had some thoughts on this…scheme.

There is a slight flaw with this idea.
Refrigeration, reverse osmosis, pumping heat, all takes a lot of work. Both the latent heat of fusion extracted from the water to turn it into ice and the waste heat from the freezing process will have to be dumped somewhere.
If they dump the waste heat into the Arctic ocean, or the air, it will probably melt the ice their submarine just finished freezing.

And I have a couple thoughts on Kotahatuhaha’s…scheme.

All that melting fresh-watered-up ice restores the polar salt water ecosystem how, exactly?

All that heat (lots of it from a project of this scale) injected into the ocean, or worse, into the atmosphere, slows the warming of our atmosphere and our climate how, exactly?

Wait—I have an idea.  Recall all those efforts to capture and sequester atmospheric CO2 in holes in the ground, perhaps salt caves (known for their geologic stability) or holes drilled for the purpose: pump all that waste heat into those holes, too.  After all, that’s what heat pumps do—move heat from here to there.

And: think of all the green jobs and all the out-of-work elves who are between seasons.

And: think of all the starving children in Bangladesh and all the food these large-screen refrigerators could preserve and keep safe for them.

Engineers? Got their degrees from the College of Cracker Jack, did they?

A Foolish Question

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In a piece about British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s new Brexit architect Dominic Cummings, a question was raised that’s central to the next three months of Great Britain’s future and perhaps to its future’s subsequent years.

The question now is whether he [Cummings] will steer the Johnson government toward swallowing a compromise divorce deal with the EU or prepare it to quit with no deal at all.

This is a foolish question. Not only are they not mutually exclusive, they must be done in parallel—or rather the better question must be done in parallel with the no-deal: steering the matter toward a better compromise from the EU.

The no-deal departure, fully set up, is the only lever the Brits have against a mendacious Brussels.

The Judge Misunderstands

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“America, love it or leave it.”  Judge Andrew Napolitano says this about that statement:

The phrase itself—with its command of the government’s way or the highway—admits no dissenting opinions, suggests that all is well and proper here, and insinuates that moral norms and cultural values cannot be improved. The phrase itself is un-American.

This is nonsense, and Napolitano is projecting, or he’s dissembling. The phrase has no government’s way or the highway meaning, and it calls forth dissenting opinions.  Especially contrary to Napolitano’s distortion, the phrase insists not only that “norms and cultural values” can be improved, but that those with dissenting opinions have an obligation to offer their ideas for solutions.  And thereby does not at all suggest that “all is well and proper here.”  In fine, it demands, all it demands, is American-ness—loyalty to America.

Except in the fetid imaginations of the Left, and apparently of Napolitano.

The phrase simply suggests that if a man is miserable here, he’s free to leave, and it wonders why he does not.

Of course, loving America necessarily includes wanting to make us better, which involves praise for the things we are doing better or already do well, and criticism of those things we do wrong or not well enough, while offering solutions for the corrections.

But if all a man wants to do is sit in the safety of the sidelines and carp and wallow in the misery of his location, why stay? We don’t have walls keeping anyone in. Why shouldn’t the man go somewhere where he will not have to face the misery, which is all that he sees?

As to the torrent of hatred Napolitano fears has been unleashed, that certainly has been.  The loosening of the fetters began with Obama’s and his Party henchmen’s open contempt for bitter religion- and gun-clinging denizens of flyover country.

They were loosened very much further with Obama’s State Department Secretary and staffers insulting the intelligence of Americans by insisting that the terrorist murders in Benghazi were the result of a YouTube movie

The fetters were taken off altogether by then-Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton calling tens of millions of Americans irredeemably deplorable racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic homophobes.

The sharks of hatred currently are chummed by the racist and anti-Semitic statements of Progressive-Democratic Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, Congresswomen and behaviors that Party actively condones if not openly embraces.

America, love it, indeed, and help us do yet better.  Or leave, if you’re so miserable and find us to hateful.

Finally

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Great Britain, early in this latest stage, might finally have a Prime Minister who’s serious about Brexit because he’s committed to it in his soul, unlike the Remainer Theresa May (whom I think made a good faith effort, but because her heart wasn’t in it, she couldn’t perform).

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson laid out a hard-line negotiating stance with the European Union, setting the stage for fraught Brexit talks before the UK’s scheduled departure from the bloc on Oct 31.

Among other things,

In a combative first speech to Parliament, Mr Johnson reiterated Thursday that the plan in place to avoid a border on the island of Ireland after Brexit—one of the central planks of the divorce deal—was “unacceptable” and would have to be abolished.

Of course it’s unacceptable, and it should have been all along—it is nothing but Brussels’ attempt to disassemble Great Britain in punishment for its effrontery in deciding to leave the EU and as a warning to other uppity member nations.

Which is sort of what Johnson said:

No country that values its independence and indeed its self-respect could agree to a treaty, which signed away our economic independence and self-government as this backstop does[.]
I do not accept the argument that says that these issues can only be solved by all or part of the UK remaining in the customs union or in the single market

Nor does this poor, dumb colonial from Texas accept such sewage.