death

10:10 = Economic Illiteracy

by Alex Schibuola on October 7, 2010

in Economy, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Zeitgeist

10:10 Video: Blowing Up Children (Viewer Discretion Advised)

What an inspiring film — people who refuse to cut their personal CO2 emissions are sentenced to death.

The economic illiteracy of these particular global warming alarmists is on fine display. Under the assumption that global warming alarmists are in favor of producing alternatives to fossil fuels; here’s the mistake in their plan to cut fossil fuel emissions:

If everyone decreases their use of fossil fuels the result is a decrease in demand for fossil fuels. The price of fossil fuels falls relative to alternative forms of energy. If fossil fuels become relatively cheaper than alternatives (read another way: alternatives become relatively more expensive), then alternative energies become less economically viable and we only end up prolonging our use of fossil fuels.

A better alternative if they do want to promote the use of alternatives would be this: Have everyone increase their consumption of fossil fuels by 10 percent per year, thus driving up the price of fossil fuels and making alternatives relatively cheaper.

So now, anyone who does not increase their consumption of fossil fuels should be summarily executed.

I wonder if the use of reason would warrant me being blown up.

Obama Speech to the UN: The Data

by Iain Murray on September 22, 2009 · 2 comments

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming, International, Regulation

Myron has already pointed out how most of what the President claimed were the threats from global warming are exaggerated.  Here’s the data to back that up.

“…[T]he threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing.”  Reality: global mean temperatures increased slightly from 1977 to 2000.  Temperatures have been flat since then.

“Rising sea levels threaten every coastline.”  Reality: sea levels have been rising on and off since the end of the last ice age 13,000 years ago.  The rate of sea level rise has not increased in recent decades over the nineteenth and twentieth century average.

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“More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent.”  Reality: there is no upward global trend in storms or floods.

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“More frequent drought and crop failures breed hunger and conflict in places where hunger and conflict already thrive.”  Reality: there is no upward global trend in major droughts.  Reversals in large-scale cycles have meant that the southward march of the Sahara Desert into the Sahel has been reversed in recent years and the Sahara is now shrinking.

“On shrinking islands, families are already being forced to flee their homes as climate refugees.”  Reality: some Pacific islanders may want to emigrate to New Zealand or Australia and are claiming that their islands are disappearing as the reason, but shrinkage has been minimal in recent decades because sea level rise has been minimal.

droughts-atollsCharts from SPPI’s Monthly CO2 Reports and from Indur Goklany, “Death and Death Rates Due to Extreme Weather Events: Global and U.S. Trends, 1900–2006,” 2007.

Chicken soup for the soul — and high blood pressure

by Fran Smith on October 17, 2008

in Agriculture, Precaution & Risk

A food and health tip for these trying times: we all know that chicken soup is good for the soul . . . and for colds, but now new research shows that chicken soup may lower high blood pressure.

Seems that collagen proteins found in chicken can have this medicinal effect. In a recent study Japanese researchers fed collagen proteins to rats, which lowered their blood pressure and acted similarly to ACE inhibitor blood pressure medications.

Here’s a bonus — a chicken soup joke:

At Jerry’s wake, as his family moved to the coffin to pray for his soul, an old granny shouted from the back “Feed him chicken soup!” She repeated this shout a few times before somebody spoke up, “But Jerry’s dead — chicken soup won’t help him.”

“It can’t hurt him!” piped granny.