Tag Archives: responsibilities

Climate Change and Science

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Dr Tim Ball has an excellent piece on Watts Up With That about the politicization of climate change pseudo-science (my characterization, not his).  This excerpt is centered on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but it illustrates the general, broad, and sole politicization of climate change pseudo-science [emphasis added].

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cannot survive. It was designed to achieve a deceptive result by limiting the research to only human causes of climate change. They effectively made reform or change impossible because each set of Reports is cumulative. That is, each Report simply adds new information to a very limited number of variables. The reality is you can only determine the human impact by knowing and understanding all the variables and mechanisms of natural climate. Most of the public think the IPCC look at climate and climate change in total and IPCC participants and promoters did nothing to dissuade them of that error. This is part of the proof that IPCC creators had a singular political objective for which natural variability was a problem. Without the political objective there is no need for a government agency like the IPCC even to determine natural climate and climate change.

Ball’s article is long-ish, but it’s well worth the read.

One China and One China

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Here’s the People’s Republic of China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, still on about the Republic of China’s President, Tsai Ing-wen’s congratulatory telecon with President-Elect Donald Trump:

We urge the new US leader and government to fully understand the seriousness of the Taiwan issue, and to continue to stick to the one-China policy[.]

He went on to say that US-PRC relations would be “badly affected” were such behaviors to continue.

Indeed we do fully understand the seriousness of the Taiwan issue and the seriousness of the status of the RoC, which sits on that island.  It’s about time our administration gained that understanding, too, and began moving away from the…foolishness…of the last 45 years.

And Geng had this:

The Taiwan question has a bearing on China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and is one of China’s core interests.

Indeed.  The “Taiwan” question has a very large bearing on the island nation’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity and is at the center of the RoC’s core interests.

If our relationship with the mainland Chinese government is “badly affected,” that would be to the PRC’s detriment, not ours.  Furthermore, our relationship with the mainland already is—or would be with a less timid administration—badly affected by the PRC’s naked aggression in the East and South China Seas and by its use of northern Korea’s behaviors as levers against the Republic of Korea, Japan, and us.

The PRC isn’t helping matters either, when it trots out its token, and crony, capitalist Wang Jianlin to make naked threats against American citizens:

I’ve invested $10 billion in the U.S. I have 20,000 employees there.  If things aren’t handled well, those 20,000 people won’t have food to eat[.]

(The PRC and Wang are projecting their own failings, too: Americans don’t starve from our government’s retaliation against those who disobey it.)

The beginning of Trump’s recognition:

Trump said on “Fox News Sunday” that he doesn’t feel “bound by a one-China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.”

It’s remotely possible for reasonable men to debate the degree of linkage involved in the fate of a sovereign nation, but it’s entirely appropriate for Trump—or anyone—to not feel bound by a “one-China” policy.  Throughout these last 45 years, the US has never recognized a one-China policy; we’ve only acknowledged that the PRC and an early, weak RoC had such a policy, even though too many American administrations have meekly behaved as though we accepted it.

On the other hand, one China: The Republic of China.  One China: The People’s Republic of China.

One China, and one China.

A Hack

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The Russians are alleged to be behind the hacks into the Democrats’ IT systems, and they’re alleged to have so engaged in order to sow distrust in our election system and procedures and especially to influence our just concluded election in favor of the ultimate winner, President-Elect Donald Trump.  Indeed, the CIA and other of our intelligence agencies have said that the hacks have all the earmarks of Russian hackers.

A couple things about that.  The NLMSM’s bold, declarative statements based on those intelligence agency statements that the Russians did it notwithstanding, “have all the earmarks” does not mean the Russians did it, only that it looks like they did it.  Of course getting actual proof in the intelligence or the hacking world is more difficult even than getting “proof”—sufficient reduction of reasonable doubt—in a criminal trial.  Nor does that difficulty, or the limitation of a statement of “all the earmarks,” mean the Russians didn’t do it, especially in the face of their history.

The other thing centers on the assumption that the Russians really did do the hacks and for the reasons named.  Now the NLMSM, whose favored Democrats were losers in the last election at all levels from the Presidential level on down, is pushing at the top of its collective lungs the idea that the Russians did it, and to favor Trump, as though these were facts.

So: assume the Russians really did do the hacks for the reasons named.  The NLMSM, in its temper tantrums over their loss and their having been ignored by American voters, is playing along with that Russian goal and with that serving, wittingly or not, to discredit Trump and the elections, and to sow doubt about the legitimacy of both.

Congress is pressing for bipartisan investigations into the matter, and it’s pushing for President Barack Obama to release all of the report that will result from the investigation he’s ordered into the matter.  He should, and so should President Trump if the Obama investigation isn’t complete before Trump takes office.

The question is valid, and it should be investigated and answered, but press hysteria contributes nothing to an objective resolution while sowing the doubts the press alleges the Russians want sown.

Sexism in a Court

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The singer Kesha, in a Manhattan court, is suing Sony and ex-producer “Dr Luke” over allegations of having been drugged and raped.  There are (unsubstantiated) reports that the presiding judge, Shirley Kornreich, should be removed from the case because she’s married to Proskauer Rose law firm partner Edward Kornreich, and Proskauer Rose represents Sony.

Kornreich says the move is sexist.

If it’s an issue at all, it’s an issue because women are now part of the professional work force[.]

Kornreich reveals her own sexism with that claim.  The move, if it existed beyond press reports (Kesha’s lawyers say they weren’t going to file any recusal motion), was about conflicts of interest from family ties connecting a judge to one of the litigants; it had nothing to do with the genders of the individuals who are—or might be—tied.

Veterans Administration Strikes Again

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And once again, its blow contributes to a death. This time, it’s the VA’s Talihina, Oklahoma, facility, and this place allowed maggots to breed in the injury of a veteran.

Executive Director Myles Deering said the maggots were discovered while the patient was alive but were not the cause of his death. He said the man came into the center with an infection.

Deering tried to play down the incident:

He did not succumb as a result of the parasites.  He succumbed as a result of the sepsis.

This is the level of attention, much less actual medical care, our veterans get from the VA.  Never mind that if this facility’s imitation medical personnel had taken the infection seriously, they would have noticed the maggots and maybe done something about them.  And maybe cleaned up the flies and the flies’ eggs whence the maggots came.  And maybe cleaned up the whole facility a little bit.

Four persons, a physician’s assistant and the Talihina facility’s Director of Nursing and two other nurses, have been allowed to resign over the matter.  Never mind any accountability for these.  Never mind the allegedly attending physician responsible for this veteran’s care receiving being held accountable, so far, at least.

It’s long past time to get rid of the VA and to use its budget and what would have been its budgets in succeeding years to provide vouchers for our veterans so they can get the care they need from the doctors and hospitals they choose.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.