POPE FRANCIS, PUT A LID ON IT. PLEASE.

POPE FRANCIS, PUT A LID ON IT. PLEASE.

 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN CLIMATE, RELIGION

Pope Francis has already caused consternation among knowledgeable Catholics with his criticisms of economic freedom. Some have tried to defend him or reinterpret his words, but it is hard to sugarcoat the fact that he is instinctively hostile to free enterprise. Perhaps this is because, as a native of Argentina, he has never seen free enterprise at work and doesn’t understand what it can do for the average citizen.

Now Francis has taken on the global warming cause. Again, it is hard to interpret his words as representing anything but ignorance of the relevant science. Catholic Online reports:

This March, following a visit to the Philippines, Pope Francis will publish an encyclical on the environment that insiders say will tackle the issue of global warming head on. Pope Francis is hoping to have some impact when world leaders meet to discuss climate change in Paris next year. …

The publication will be a reminder to American political conservatives that Pope Francis defies all attempt to label him as one thing or another. He is neither conservative, nor liberal, but he is Catholic.

This sort of thing is said smugly. But political views are not shaped merely by good will. The differences between conservatives and liberals turn mostly on what public policies produce the best results. That is an empirical question that can only be answered in the light of knowledge. I am afraid that Francis is utterly unqualified to make this sort of empirical political judgment.

The coming encyclical is informed by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the world’s single-longest running scientific mission. The institution has already affirmed that global warming is real and a threat to people around the world, especially in developing nations.

The statement that “global warming is real” is stupid. Global warming and global cooling both happen–they alternate–and they are both real. For the last seventeen or eighteen years, however, there has been no global warming. Beyond that, there is strong evidence that on balance a warmer world is better for people, not worse.

Some conservatives argue that the best way to cope with climate change is to increase the pace of industrialization and development to generate the massive amounts of capital that experts anticipate we will need to effectively cope with the threat. The problem is the only way to harvest that capital is to tax the makers of wealth, something conservatives generally oppose.

“Harvesting capital” is what liberals love to do, to the ruination of all non-cronies. Many conservatives, like me, argue that the optimal policy toward the Earth’s climate is to do nothing at all, since we don’t influence it to an important degree.

Then, there is the problem of placing such capital in the hands of governments which are notorious for corruption and inefficiency.

Sanity briefly pokes through the clouds.

Liberals, on the other hand, prefer to slow or even halt development in favor of “green” solutions. The moral issue is that these solutions can keep developing regions economically depressed, further entrenching poverty.

Exactly. Stalling progress in developed nations is a bad thing, too.

Neither solution appears practical from a moral standpoint without some kind of added guidance.

Really? So what is that additional “guidance,” and why is the Pope qualified to give it?

[U]nmistakable signs of global warming are emerging around the world. Sea level rise, melting ice caps, and other unusual, but generally predicted weather phenomena have been observed.

This is just wrong. Sea level has been rising for more than 12,000 years. Currently, sea ice is at the highest level recorded in modern times. The globe is not, in fact, warming, although it certainly could in the future. “Unusual” weather phenomena are not being observed to any notable degree. On the contrary, we are living in a time in which extreme weather events are at a relatively low level. The Pope has no idea what he is talking about.

And while the actual climate refuses to cooperate with climate change models and their dire predictions, the trend appears unmistakable.

Another brief moment of partial sanity. The climate models are politically motivated and lavishly funded to the tune of billions of dollars by governments in search of more power. The models are not competent to predict anything accurately; they are falsified by experience. So why are we talking about the global warming that they forecast, but is not occurring? And how is the trend “unmistakable,” when it isn’t happening?

The cause is also beyond doubt. Humans are dumping quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere faster than nature can absorb it, leading to global warming.

Ridiculous on multiple levels. The Earth’s climate is always changing, and has been for millions or billions of years. As it happens, we are living in a relatively cool era. It has been warmer for around 90% of the time since the end of the last Ice Age, 12,000 or so years ago. So, could it get warmer? Of course it could. Is it obvious that any such warming is our fault? Not at all. Again, the Pope and his “science” advisers are not well enough informed to be helpful.

The most practical solution will be to find a way to reduce emissions while planting trees to absorb existing CO2 from the atmosphere, since CO2 also happens to be plant food.

At this point, let’s be charitable and draw down the curtain. CO2 “happens” to be plant food? Well, yeah, that is the basis for pretty much all life on Earth. The Pope might want to go back to the Book of Genesis.

I am a Lutheran, not a Catholic, but my understanding is that the Pope’s statements are deemed infallible only when he pronounces ex cathedra, and that the sort of ill-informed scientific nonsense that he now contemplates would not be entitled to any such deference. Nevertheless, even the Pope’s most casual comments may be influential. It therefore behooves Francis to either 1) learn what he is talking about when it comes to climate science–probably a poor idea, since the field is in its infancy and there is no consensus about virtually any important proposition, or 2) go back to saving souls and keep his mouth shut about the climate. I recommend the latter course.

So does Michael Ramirez:

Michael Ramirez is way smarter than Francis, when it comes to issues of public policy. Maybe we should start a movement to make him the next pontiff. Assuming, of course, that he is Catholic.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/12/pope-francis-put-a-lid-on-it-please.php

When Facts Are Obsolete

When Facts Are Obsolete 
Juries in Ferguson and elsewhere could not ignore them — unlike mobs and the media. 

By Thomas Sowell

• 

"Hands Up, Don't Shoot!" gestures at a protest over the Ferguson grand jury in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty)

 

Thomas Sowell 

Some of us, who are old enough to remember the old television police series Dragnet may remember Sergeant Joe Friday saying, “Just the facts, ma’am.” But that would be completely out of place today. Facts are becoming obsolete, as recent events have demonstrated.

What matters today is how well you can concoct a story that fits people’s preconceptions and arouses their emotions. Politicians like New York mayor Bill de Blasio, professional demagogues like Al Sharpton, and innumerable irresponsible people in the media have shown that they have great talent in promoting a lynch-mob atmosphere toward the police.

Grand juries that examine hard facts live in a different world from mobs who listen to rhetoric and politicians who cater to the mobs.

During the controversy over the death of Trayvon Martin, for example, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus said that George Zimmerman had tracked Trayvon Martin down and shot him like a dog. The fact is that Zimmerman did not have to track down Trayvon Martin, who was sitting right on top of him, punching him till his face was bloody.

After the death of Michael Brown, members of the Congressional Black Caucus stood up in Congress, with their hands held up, saying, “Don’t shoot.” Although there were some who claimed that this is what Michael Brown said and did, there were other witnesses — all black, by the way — who said that Brown was charging toward the policeman when he was shot.

What was decisive was not what either set of witnesses said but what the autopsy revealed, an autopsy involving three sets of forensic experts, including one representing Michael Brown’s family. Witnesses can lie but the physical facts don’t lie, even if politicians, mobs, and the media prefer to take lies seriously.

The death of Eric Garner has likewise spawned stories having little relationship to facts. The story is that Garner died because a chokehold stopped his breathing. But Garner did not die with a policeman choking him.

He died later, in an ambulance where his heart stopped. He had a long medical history of various diseases, as well as a long criminal history. No doubt the stress of his capture did not do him any good, and he might well still be alive if he had not resisted arrest. But that was his choice.

Despite people who say blithely that the police need more “training,” there is no “kinder and gentler” way to capture a 350-pound man, who is capable of inflicting grievous harm, and perhaps even death, on any of his would-be captors. The magic word “unarmed” means nothing in practice, however much the word may hype emotions.

If you are killed by an unarmed man, you are just as dead as if you had been annihilated by a nuclear bomb. But you don’t even know who is armed or unarmed until after it is all over and you can search him.

Incidentally, did you know that, during this same period when riots, looting, and arson have been raging, a black policeman in Alabama shot and killed an unarmed white teenager — and was cleared by a grand jury? Probably not, if you depend on the mainstream media for your news.

The media do not merely ignore facts, they suppress facts. Millions of people saw the videotape of the beating of Rodney King. But they saw only a fraction of that tape because the media left out the rest, which showed Rodney King — another huge man — resisting arrest and refusing to be handcuffed, so that he could be searched.

Television viewers did not get to see the other black men in the same vehicle that Rodney King was driving recklessly. Those other black men were not beaten. And the grand jury got to see the whole video, after which they acquitted the police — and the media then published the jurors’ home addresses.

Such media retribution against people they don’t like is part of a growing lynch-mob mentality. The black witnesses in Missouri, whose testimony confirmed what the police officer said, expressed fears for their own safety for telling what the physical evidence showed was the truth.

Is this what we want? Grand juries responding to mobs and the media, instead of to the facts?

— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2013 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395475/when-facts-are-obsolete-thomas-sowell

Common Core will be defining issue for GOP presidential contenders in 2015

BY HUGH HEWITT 

Republicans have long preached reform of public education and stressed charter schools, better...

If the year ends quietly — not a given with the warnings in Australia and the alerts across Europe — I will spend the New Year's Day Thursday show reviewing the issue that will drive much of the campaign agenda in 2015 and which will define many of the candidates as contenders or pretenders: Common Core, or "Obamacore" as it is increasingly known in center-right circles.

Over the past 18 months I have interviewed a number of the leading GOPers on the issue, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, to name just four. Now the issue has drawn the attention even of the left.

Professor David Kirp, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote about the "Rage Against the Common Core" in the opinion pages of the New York Times, which is a sure fire sign that even the people most out of touch with conservative activists — Berkeley professors, New York Times' editors and readers — are awake to the earthquake rolling through American classrooms. Read all of Kirp's analysis, but the takeaway was that opposition to the standards and the testing behemoth they have spawned is already huge, and growing bigger by the month.

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Widespread (and very passionate) opposition to the new standards and tests will roil not only schools but most definitely politics, especially Republican politics. Republicans have long preached reform of public education and stressed charter schools, better teachers, more accountability — and higher standards. But the process that birthed Common Core is now widely believed to have careened off course and into the waiting arms of President Obama's educrats, most notably Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who has deployed what many believe is an unconstitutional process — a waiver of federal law in the form of No Child Left Behind accountability requirements — in exchange for state and school district commitments to the adoption of Common Core.

Suddenly education "reform" — for as long as the country has existed, a matter primarily of local control — has been federalized. Add in concerns over data collection and profiteering among the cadre of new curriculum experts, and a perfectly toxic political brew is waiting for the GOP candidates.

Jeb Bush is the most credentialed of all the GOP candidates for the nomination on the issue of education reform. Bush tirelessly championed all manner of innovation through eight years as the head of the Sunshine State, but he was also central to the launch of the Common Core initiative. Common Core got its start in the last decade as a joint effort of the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). Bush is quick to defend the original theory and its necessity, as he did on my program, vigorously rejecting the idea that Common Core meant in practice a national one-size-fits-all curriculum.

"Standards are different from curriculum," he told me, "and that's where I think the biggest misnomer [occurs and] where people legitimately get concerned."

"I would be concerned if we had a national curriculum influenced by the federal government," Bush added. "My God, I'd break out in a rash."

Perry and Rubio simply reject Common Core as a massive and unworkable failure, and Jindal is suing the federal government over Duncan's waiver policy. The worst suspicions of many GOP voters were confirmed when Duncan got caught telling a group of state school superintendents that opposition to the Common Core came from "white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn't quite as good as they thought they were."

Nothing like a dose of Obama-era arrogance and condescension to assure implacable hostility to an "innovation," and to every GOPer seen to support it.

Hugh Hewitt is a nationally syndicated talk radio host, law professor at Chapman University's Fowler School of Law, and author, most recently of The Happiest Life. He posts daily at HughHewitt.comand is on Twitter @hughhewitt.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/common-core-will-be-defining-issue-for-gop-presidential-contenders-in-2015/article/2557928

OBAMA’S IMPENDING REGULATORY ASSAULT

OBAMA’S IMPENDING REGULATORY ASSAULT

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN LABOR UNIONS, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, REGIONALISM

President Obama promised that 2014 would be the year of the presidential “phone and pen.” Atypically, Obama delivered to some extent on that promise.

For Obama, 2015 will be the year in which he eschews the phone and resorts even more to the pen. His controversial executive orders on amnesty and Cuba are just the tip of that iceberg.

For years, leftist dominated federal agencies have been clamoring for an ideologically-driven regulatory assault. Believe it or not, these agencies have been restrained to some extent by the White House, which was wary, first, of the 2012 election and then, to a lesser degree, of the 2014 mid-terms.

Now, however, school is out. The regulatory assault has commenced.

December saw the Justice Department sign on to EEOC’s attempt to rewrite federal employment law to prohibit discrimination against the transgendered. I discussed this movehere.

December also saw the National Labor Relations Board file complaints across the country against McDonald’s based on claims that workers at its franchises were fired or intimidated for participating in union organizing and in a national protest movement calling for higher wages. The complaint adopts the theory that McDonald’s is a “joint employer,” and thus can be held liable along with its franchisees for any unfair labor practices.

For three decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations, McDonald’s and other companies that make wide use of franchises and contract employers have been insulated from liability for the alleged unfair labor practices of franchisees under the NLRB’s definition of a joint employer. Franchisers are only deemed joint employers if they are involved in setting wages and hiring workers.

But big labor is targeting McDonald’s, and the Obama NLRB is, in effect, joining the campaign.

What’s next? I don’t know. But before long, we should expect to see the Obama administration’s final rule on “affirmatively furthering fair housing” (AFFH), also known as the left’s attempt to dictate how we shall live.

Many expected to see this final rule in 2014. However, as I wrote here, the White House decided to wait until after the election.

The reason was obvious. We’re not talking about raising the minimum wage here. We’re talking about redistributing money from the suburbs (where all those “swing voters” reside) to the cities and inner-ring suburbs, and imposing racial and income balance in every neighborhood. Team Obama understood that in an election year, this would have been political poison.

Originally, the date for promulgating the final rule was pushed back to December of this year. Now, the rule probably will issue early in 2015. So too, perhaps, with the IRS’spostponed rules attacking free speech via a redefinition of what constitutes of 501(c)(4) organization.

The good news about Obama’s regulatory assault is that, unlike with a statute, a new administration can wipe away regs with a stroke of the pen (no phone required). The bad news is that Republican administrations tend not to do so. They fear the howls of protest that will appear in the mainstream media.

Maybe, because Obama has gone so far, this phenomenon will not apply to his more egregious regulations. Or maybe we’ll elect an unusually fearless Republican president.

Or maybe not.

Finally, there is this silver lining. The Democratic presidential nominee (let’s assume for present purposes it will be Hillary Clinton) will have to take a position on at least some of Obama’s aggressive rules and regulations. Clinton’s present strategy is to pander to the left in order to protect her position in the Democratic primaries. Thus, she likely will support Obama’s regulatory assault.

This creates an obvious risk for Clinton. If the policies were too radical safely to unleash before the 2012 and 2014 elections, they are too radical for Clinton safely to embrace in the 2016 campaign.

Understandably, though, Obama cares more about the nature of his “legacy” than about the nature of his successor,.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/12/obamas-impending-regulatory-assault.php

Ending Executive Amnesty

Ending Executive Amnesty 

Let’s strike a blow for states’ rights. 

By Josh Gelernter

• 

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (Library of Congress)

 

This week, Tennessee became the 25th state to join a lawsuit against the president’s executive amnesty order. The lawsuit may work, but there’s another, more direct, and considerably more interesting redress against executive overreach. Proposed in 1798 by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

In 1798, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were signed into law by President John Adams. The A&S Acts comprised four bills that increased the federal government’s power to shut up dissenters; most noxious was a provision that permitted the prosecution of anyone who said anything about the government that the government considered “seditious.” Fourteen of the dominant Federalist party’s political enemies were arrested and imprisoned.

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John Adams has — to date — been our only Federalist president. Prior to the presidential election of 1804, votes were cast only for president; each elector in the Electoral College cast two presidential votes, and whoever came in second became the vice president. In 1798, Federalist John Adams’s VP was Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson — and Thomas Jefferson hated the Alien and Sedition Acts. So did future president James Madison.

Like all VPs, Vice President Jefferson had approximately no power. And James Madison wasn’t even vice president. So, like all great dissenters, they grabbed their pens and — anonymously — wrote the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions. The K&V resolutions laid out what would come to be known as the nullification doctrine.

The nullification doctrine posits that, as the federal government is the product of the Constitution, and the Constitution is a compact of the states, it’s the states that have the final say on any law’s constitutionality. If a state determines that a law exceeds the terms of the compact to which it agreed, it has the right to nullify that law within its own borders.

Jefferson and Madison’s idea was for states to declare the Alien and Sedition Acts null and void. Instead of joining a lawsuit against the executive amnesty, those 25 states could simply deem the executive amnesty null and void, and refuse to recognize illegal aliens’ work permits or issue them driver’s licenses.

Why, you wonder, would that be better than filing a lawsuit? In a certain sense, it wouldn’t — because winning that suit would strike down Mr. Obama’s order in all 50 states. Which is not an unlikely outcome, given the order’s extremely shaky legal footing. However —

The judiciary has consistently ruled against the nullification doctrine, asserting its unique, judicial right to declare laws unconstitutional. But this executive order isn’t a law. And given its extremely shaky legal footing, it isn’t difficult to imagine a federal bench recognizing the states’ right to disregard federal orders that don’t clearly have the force of law. And that would be a tremendous — tremendous — blow against the executive’s assumption of legislative powers.

But in the shorter, directer term: It would force the Obama administration to go on offense, suing the states to enforce a law that isn’t a law. And I don’t think that case can be made.

Power to the states; power to the people. Huzzah. Write your governor; call your attorney general.

— Josh Gelernter writes weekly for NRO and is a regular contributor to The Weekly Standard.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395388/ending-executive-amnesty-josh-gelernter

VOSTOK ICE CORES AND THE 8,000-YEAR LAG

VOSTOK ICE CORES AND THE 8,000-YEAR LAG

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN CLIMATE

During Earth’s recent history, there has been a relationship between carbon dioxide and global temperatures: when temperatures rise, the concentration of CO2 subsequently rises, and when temperatures fall, CO2 concentration thereafter declines. Ice cores from Vostok in Antarctica have been studied intensively to analyze temperatures and concentrations of various gases over the course of millennia. Euan Mearns reviews the literature as it relates to both CO2 and methane:

In their seminal paper on the Vostok Ice Core, Petit et al (1999) note that CO2 lags temperature during the onset of glaciations by several thousand years but offer no explanation. They also observe that CH4 and CO2 are not perfectly aligned with each other but offer no explanation. The significance of these observations [is] therefore ignored. At the onset of glaciations temperature drops to glacial values before CO2 begins to fall suggesting that CO2 has little influence on temperature modulation at these times. …

The fit of CO2 to temperature is actually not nearly so tight as for CH4. There is a persistent tendency for CO2 to lag temperature throughout and this time lag is most pronounced at the onset of each glacial cycle “where CO2 lags temperature by several thousand years.”

This chart shows how the Vostok ice cores reveal temperature and CO2 concentration over the Earth’s recent history, i.e., the last 450,000 years. The present is on the left; click to enlarge:

Rising temperatures cause an increase in CO2 levels primarily because warmer oceans hold less CO2. (“The most likely source for most of the CO2 is considered to be the oceans where warming seawater can hold less CO2.”) At neither end of the glaciation cycle does CO2 concentration forecast temperature. The linked article contains much technical discussion of the mechanisms by which rising and falling temperatures cause (over a time period of millennia) rising and falling levels of CO2. These are the paper’s conclusions:

* Over four glacial cycles CO2, CH4 and temperature display cyclical co-variation. This has been used by the climate science community as evidence for amplification of orbital forcing via greenhouse gas feedbacks.

* I am not the first to observe that CO2 lags temperature in Vostok and indeed Petit et al make the observation that at the onset of glaciation CO2 lags temperature by several thousand years. But they fail to discuss this and the fairly profound implications it has.

* Temperature and CH4 are extremely tightly correlated with no time lags. Thus, while CO2 and CH4 are correlated with temperature in a general sense, in detail their response to global geochemical cycles are different. Again Petit et al make the observation but fail to discuss it.

* At the onset of the last glaciation the time lag was 8,000 years and the world was cast into the depths of an ice age with CO2 variance evidently contributing little to the large fall in temperature.

* The only conclusion possible from Vostok is that variations in CO2 and CH4 are both caused by global temperature change and freeze thaw cycles at high latitudes. These natural geochemical cycles makes it inevitable that CO2 and CH4 will correlate with temperature. It is therefore totally invalid to use this relationship as evidence for CO2 forcing of climate, especially since during the onset of glaciations, there is no correlation at all.

Based on Earth’s recent geologic history, claiming that CO2 concentration causes warming is like arguing that geese cause temperatures to fall by flying South.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/12/vostok-ice-cores-and-the-8000-year-lag.php

PER CAPITA FEDERAL SPENDING SHOWS 40-YEAR TRENDS

PER CAPITA FEDERAL SPENDING SHOWS 40-YEAR TRENDS

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN FEDERAL BUDGET, FEDERAL DEBT AND DEFICIT

Veronique de Rugy has performed a real service by compiling the data shown in the chart below, in a manner that I haven’t seen it before. The chart depicts per capita federal spending from 1962 to the present, broken down into three categories: discretionary, mandatory and net interest, and stated in constant 2014 dollars. First the chart, then some comments about it. Click to enlarge:

Shown on a per capita basis and broken down into these basic components, federal spending appears less like a monolithic, irresistible rising tide. Trends become more apparent. Most obvious, of course, is the fact that entitlements have come to dominate federal spending. Discretionary spending, meanwhile, has been relatively flat on a per capita, inflation-adjusted basis.

It declined after Republicans took control of Congress in 1994 and started to rise again in 2002. I suppose that mostly represents increased spending on defense after 9/11. (One way in which this chart could be more helpful is if discretionary spending were broken down into defense and non-defense.) Discretionary spending leveled off after 2004, but then started to rise rather sharply after Democrats took control of Congress in 2007, and President Obama took office in 2009. It then declined again after Republicans took the House in the 2010 midterm elections, and spending caps were put in place that have applied for the last several years–even though those caps have not always been observed.

The less subtle point is that overall federal spending has been an ever-growing burden on the American people. On a per capita, constant dollar basis, it tripled between 1962 and 2009. The difference–that is, the growth since 1962–is around $8,000 per person, or $32,000 for a family of four. One could calculate, crudely, that for the one-half of American households that pay federal income taxes, the increased burden of federal spending since 1962 was at least $64,000 annually for a family of four. To the extent that some of that spending was paid for with borrowed dollars, it merely postpones the burden to the next generation, and adds interest to it–interest that will be at much higher rates in the years to come.

You can pore over the chart and draw your own conclusions, but I don’t see how anyone can look at the numbers without concluding that the number one fiscal imperative for the federal government is to reduce spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/12/per-capita-federal-spending-shows-40-year-trends.php