Nov 15
It is a frequent claim by climate socialists that manmade CO2 emissions are causing more severe or bizarre weather.
Now NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) admits that deaths due to severe weather are at a 22-year low in the U.S. See here.
Only 333 people died from severe weather in 2014.
Deaths from cold were double the number of deaths from heat (see graph).
Nov 14
Canadian publisher and investor Conrad Black interviews Mark Steyn.
Conrad Black describes the U.S. Justice Department as the world’s largest organized crime organization.
As evidence of the collapse of America’s criminal courts, Black discusses the conviction rates of the U.S., Canada, and the UK:
99 percent conviction rate in the U.S.
61 percent in Ontario, Candada.
Conviction rates in the 50 percentile range in the United Kingdom.
Nov 14
Lysander Spooner University will be offering two courses in Washington, D.C. in conjunction with the Fully Informed Jury Association next week.
Wednesday, November 18, 1:00 pm. The Sociology of Trial by Jury: This course will be located at the 2015 International Drug Policy Reform Conference, the largest anti-drug-war conference in the world. Dr. Roger Roots will be offering a 25-question exam, followed by a lecture on the topic. The course will be located at the Fully Informed Jury Association table at the event.
Friday, November 20, 2015, 1:00 pm. The Sociology of the War on Drugs: This course will be conducted at the Fully Informed Jury table at the 2015 International Drug Policy Reform Conference.
The location for the 2015 International Drug Policy Reform Conference at the Crystal Gateway Marriott, 1700 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, VA 22202 (just over the Potomac River from the Washington Monument.
Nov 13
On a per-mile basis, the automobile is the safest form of land transportation ever invented. See here. It is often said that planes are safer than cars; but on a per-trip or per-hour basis, cars are even safer than planes.
Yet governments, for a century, have burdened car travel with reams of unnecessary rules and regulations. Untold thousands if not millions of people have been violently pulled over while driving by government police.
Today, several private companies are developing driverless cars. These cars will almost certainly be safer than human-driven cars.
No one knows precisely; but there may be hundreds of such cars already on roadways in California, Michigan and elsewhere.
Here is a story out of San Jose, California of a driverless car being pulled over by a cop for driving too slow. (In fact, the car was moving at an entirely legal and proper speed; the nosy cop had nothing better to do than interrupt the car’s travel.)
No ticket was given, and the Google Self-Driving Car Project said that “After 1.2 million miles of autonomous driving (that’s the human equivalent of 90 years of driving experience), we’re proud to say we’ve never been ticketed!”
Nov 12
By Roger I. Roots, J.D., Ph.D.,
Founder, Lysanderspooneruniversity.com
Those who promote manmade-global-warming hysteria cheered last week when the attorney general of New York announced that he was investigating Exxon to determine if Exxon has spent money to fund research by climate-change skeptics. The move followed a trendy notion that there is something improper about energy companies scrutinizing a scientific agenda explicitly aimed at bankrupting and abolishing them.
In fact, given the high-stakes war being waged over climate policy, it would be utterly irresponsible for an energy company NOT to independently investigate the science behind the issue. The vast majority of all money spent on the science of global warming is spent by governments seeking more power to regulate the energy industry. It has been said that university climate scientists are flush with government grant money if they side with the government; broke if they don’t. They get tenure if they promote the government’s agenda, and risk being denied tenure if they don’t.
Even so, climate-change alarmists are increasingly desperate. NASA recently admitted that south-polar ice is at its highest level ever recorded by satellite. Ice at the North Pole has expanded by hundreds of miles. Satellites have measured no global warming whatsoever in 18 years, and weather-related natural disasters are down 80 percent from a decade ago.
The only ‘science’ bolstering the alarmists’ view are (1) government-funded computer models which are known to overestimate global warming by an average of two to five times, and (2) government-funded SURFACE temp data which are constantly “adjusted” by government-funded scientists to suit the government.
The alarmists behind the global-warming scare are desperate to prove a link between fossil fuel money and climate-change skepticism. But because direct links are difficult to find, the alarmists must stack inference upon inference. An easily-debunked “study” supposedly proving a link between fossil-fuel barons and climate skepticism shows only that such investors have spent money on conservative think tanks, which occasionally delve into skepticism of climate hysteria.
How could it ever be ‘illegal’ to support scientific research or skepticism? Apparently, the New York Attorney General is acting on a theory that that ‘Exxon knew’ that only one position (the government-approved position) was correct during the 1970s or 1980s. (Note that the “internal documents” which supposedly provide the “smoking gun” evidence for this proposition are mostly just memos or emails in which energy-firm employees merely discussed various dimensions of the issue. See here, and here.) According to this government theory, after being alerted to speculation that CO2 may cause global warming, Exxon was not allowed to investigate further.
Even today, after decades of discussion, the role of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is a matter of controversy among Ph.D.-holding scientists. Indeed, several high-profile scientists have changed their opinions to become more skeptical of the manmade-global-warming theory over time.
Exxon could actually be sued by its own shareholders for breach of fiduciary duties if the corporation failed to inquire into the government’s claims. The Wrigley gum corporation was sued by shareholders in the 1960s for refusing to install lights at Wrigley Field, and thus failing to maximize profits. Other corporations have been sued by their shareholders for foolish spending decisions, or failing to perform due diligence regarding potential threats to profitability.
UPDATE: John Stossel has a new column on the New York AG: This AG is waging war on liberty on a variety of fronts. He is seeking to ban fantasy sports betting, mixed martial arts, ridesharing and apartment sharing. Mostly to appease government licensees and labor unions. See here.
Nov 12
Everyone is aware that the fossil record indicates that untold thousands if not millions of species have gone extinct.
A 2014 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that dinosaurs in the Jurassic Period lived in an atmosphere that had FIVE TIMES HIGHER GREENHOUSE GAS CONCENTRATIONS than today’s atmosphere.
There were many active volcanoes. Plant and animal life thrived in amazing diversity.
Greenery COVERED the earth.
It seems that the long dormancy of the volcanoes (and the subsequent lowering of CO2 levels) caused MASSIVE DIE-OFF of plant and animal life.
Nov 12
Just as in other heavily-regulated industries (think meatpacking), the new regulations in healthcare are causing consolidation, fewer but larger insurance companies, and much higher premium costs.
Here is a summary of the situation. Dr. Mandy Cohen of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recently testified that almost 700,000 Americans have lost their health coverage because the insurance co-ops formed under ObamaCare couldn’t compete with major insurance companies.
[T]he insurance industry lobby is quietly advocating for prescription drug price controls, while simultaneously seeking 20% – 40% premium rate increases in 2016.
[And while drug companies are simultaneously lobbying against the insurance industry. –Lysander]
As ObamaCare relies on a dwindling number of insurance companies to administer the U.S. healthcare system, . . . The federal government seems perfectly willing to pour money into its failed ObamaCare experiment. The co-op collapse alone will likely cost the American taxpayer over $2 trillion.
Nov 12
After 9/11/2001, Congress deprivatized airport screening and created the Transportation Security Administration.
The TSA is 10 times more expensive than the private-contract screening in place before. Yet it provides no greater level of security.
Recent undercover attempts to smuggle weapons or breach TSA security checkpoints found that undercover agents were able to get weapons past TSA checkpoints 95 PERCENT OF THE TIME. See here.
Nov 11
Those seeking knowledge are increasingly avoiding the nation’s pro-government, state-controlled daily newspapers.
Daily newspapers now number fewer than 400 nationwide. (There were 1,800 just decades ago.)
Per capita newspaper consumption is now below 15 percent.
Overall, the newspaper industry is down nearly 80 percent.
Nov 11
Every time one walks onto a typical government-supported college campus, he enters a world of less freedom, more intimidation, and higher costs.
Parking is entirely free almost everywhere in Montana or Wyoming. Except on government college campuses.
The entirety of government funding of higher education is based on a notion that such funding helps “the poor.” But in fact, the system forces the true poor to support the children of the middle class and subsidize the luxurious lifestyles of free-market-hating neo-Stalinists.
Here is a Washington Post story (with videos) regarding recent extremist pro-government demonstrations on the campus of the University of Missouri. When a student reporter seeks to film the public spaces of the campus, government university staffpeople and faculty threaten him with physical violence.
When the student reporter–knowing his rights–invokes the First Amendment freedom of the press, one government professor visibly mocks him and calls upon students to assault the reporter.
UPDATE: Daily Caller confirms that the professor seen calling for “muscle” to violently remove the journalist is (like hundreds of other professors around the country) a committed anti-capitalist “intellectual.”
