Tag Archives: regulation

Global Warming, Again

Posted on by
Reply

A guest essayist at Watts Up With That has an interesting article. Here’s the closing paragraph (as usual, RTWT):

In summary, approximately 81% of the warming in the last century may have resulted from all anthropogenic influences, as suggested by figure 4 [see the article]. This includes water vapor, CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and land use changes to the albedo and thermal mass. CO2 may account for as much as 52% to 56% of the contribution from anthropogenic drivers (See Figs. 1 & 2). Fossil fuel-CO2 represents less than 75% of anthropogenic CO2. If we were successful in completely phasing out fossil fuels over the next 100 years, we would have a reduction of 50% in average CO2 emissions. If the Earth is warming at a nominal rate of 1°C per 100 years from all influences, then we can hope, at best, for a reduction in temperature increase of 20% (0.54×0.75×0.50) or 0.20°C. That is to say, if the world were to phase out fossil fuels in the next 100 years the warming would be 0.80 degrees instead of 1.00°C! Unfortunately, eliminating fossil fuel use will probably not be successful in significantly reducing future temperature increases, even if it can be accomplished.

A whole two tenths of a Centigrade degree, out of a climatista-expected entire one Centigrade degree. Imagine that.

Don’t Let the Door

Posted on by
Reply

…hit you in the fanny on the way out.

A University of Texas Dean [Fritz Steiner, Dean of the Texas School of Architecture] said Thursday he’s leaving the school to pursue a different job in large part because of the new Texas law that will allow concealed firearms in public college classrooms.

And

Steiner said he’s not anti-guns, but doesn’t want them in the halls of higher education. Texas faculty have worried allowing guns could have a chilling effect on academic freedom and frank discussions in classrooms.

Because he and his special snowflakes are zealously opposed to opposing, even merely differing, opinions, and they project their own response techniques to disagreements onto others. After all, academic freedom and frank discussions mean “do it my way” and “think like I do.” Just look at all the faculty-supported “safe spaces” and “free speech zones” Academia have sprouted all over our colleges and universities. See, also, the Melissa Clicks of academe. That Click ultimately was fired for her abuses is newsworthy only because of the unusualness of such abuses being recognized.

A Dangerous Precedent

Posted on by
Reply

I’m hardly a Russian apologist; I’d as soon see the place cleared off and the land restored to the forest and steppe of an earlier era.

However.

Russia is setting up to issue $3 billion in bonds, and they’ve invited a number of European, PRC, and American banks to bid on the issue—a standard government bond issue process, except that these are Russian bonds. Aside from that, the bonds are highly risky, but like many high-risk plays, the payoff can be lucrative. The decision to run a risk of this sort ordinarily is a business decision, made in a free market by the business’ managers and owners.

However.

State and Treasury have

warned some top US banks not to bid on a potentially lucrative but politically risky Russian bond deal, saying it would undermine international sanctions on Moscow, people familiar with the matter said.

Our banks’ participation in the deal is entirely legal with those international sanctions in place. But State and Treasury don’t like them.

This isn’t a President using his bully pulpit to persuade Americans to do this, don’t do that, or support this other, though.

State in particular

warned of “reputational” risks of returning “to business as usual with Russia.”

This is an agency of the Federal government making sotto voce threats against an industry to force it to support a government policy that’s carefully not encoded in law or regulation.

The market, with its understanding of Russia, is fully capable of dealing “reputational” repercussions all by itself in a free economy.

Never mind that State and Treasury each have explicitly declined to set sanctions against Russian banking or the Russian government as a whole, or that either could, if such sanctions were useful. Never mind that Congress could legislate in that direction, if such a thing were useful.

That’s the dangerous precedent. Nice bank you got there. Be too bad if something happened….

The 2nd Amendment and Campuses

Posted on by
Reply

I confess to mixed feelings about mixing children, alcohol, and guns, and that’s the mix on college campuses that’s allowed under Texas’ new concealed carry law.

However.

UT Austin President Gregory Fenves is engaging in a naked, Obama-esque effort by to ignore the law through made-up excuses.

The law, passed by the Texas legislature in its latest session, allows individuals to carry a concealed handgun while on the campus of a public, private, or independent institution of higher education.

Fenves is manufacturing his very own safe space loophole: he’s trying to block handguns in the University of Texas Austin’s dorms. Because there’s a penumbra of a shadow of an exception for dorms in that while on the campus phrase.

Or maybe because Austin’s dormitories aren’t actually on campus.

Or something. Who knows what’s going on in Fenves’ fevered imagination?

He is wrong on this, though; he’s just engaging in another Liberal assault on our 2nd Amendment.

“Innuendo fuels Clinton email saga”

Posted on by
Reply

That’s the headline above Juan Williams’ op-ed at The Hill.

Williams is right, but the innuendo is his as he contributes to the Left’s attempt to cover up Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s misbehavior.

Mainstream news shows have now joined conservative websites and magazines in roiling political waters with the suggestion that Hillary Clinton could be indicted. Such charges, the theory goes, would pertain to her sending secret government information over her personal email account while she was secretary of State.

Or, the NLMSM finally is awakening to the depths of Clinton’s misbehavior.

The email story broke last March when the New York Times reported Clinton “used a personal email account to conduct government business as Secretary of State.” In July, the story escalated when the Times incorrectly reported that requests had been made for a criminal investigation of Clinton’s handling of email.

Even after a correction on that story, her totally legal use of a private server while at the State Department became an acceptable short-hand for political opponents….

Use of the private server may not be illegal, but it is against State Department regulations—her State Department regulations—to use a private email address, much less a private server, for government business. Private email addresses are allowed for private emails, but government business—government emails, for instance—must be handled through government addresses, and so via government servers.

Oh, and that non-existent criminal investigation? The FBI doesn’t do security reviews; they’re running an investigation into the potential of her criminal behavior.

…NBC News reported that emails that had been retroactively declared classified had also been sent to the personal email account of former secretary of State Colin Powell and to key aides of his successor, Condoleezza Rice.

No, they weren’t retroactively declared classified. They were classified from their inception because of the classified information contained in them. They were only marked classified retroactively, in belated recognition of their classified nature.

Therein lies the felony aspect of Clinton’s handling of these classified emails and of her handling them via her unprotected private email server. It’s a crime to mishandle classified information; any markings of classification or their lack is wholly irrelevant to that. Indeed, properly marking classified data is part of the required handling of classified data. Clinton, who has said she’s well trained and knows all about handling classified data—and who, as Secretary of State, is the ultimate classification authority of State-originated classified data—knew all of this at the time of her mishandling.

And that bit about Powell and Rice aides similarly mishandling: that’s the Liberal morality we’ve come to know and love. Somebody else did it, so it’s all right for Clinton to do it, too. The rightness or wrongness of her behavior isn’t at all intrinsic in her behavior. The comparison, also, is cynically disingenuous. Powell’s and Rice’s aides’ dozen or so mishandlings stacked against Clinton’s 1,700? The former are certainly wrong, but the numbers show their accidental nature. This is what’s being compared with Clinton’s deliberate disregard.

It has never been shown that Clinton shared information marked as classified at the time it was sent or received.

That’s Williams’ strawman; no one is arguing otherwise. He’ll have to play with his dolly without me.

And of course there is still no evidence that she broke any law.

On the contrary, there are 1,700 instances of mishandling classified information. 50 US Code § 783 makes this mishandling clear.

More broadly, many people beyond the campaign believe the furor contributes to the perception that Clinton is not honest.

Perhaps that’s because these events are showing her dishonesty. We’re up to those 1,700 emails with classified information in them on her private server, including another 81 in the just-released batch that have been—after the fact—marked classified at one level or another.