Ron's Corner
Free Choices Freely Offered Freely Accepted or Rejected

 

Anthropogenic Global Warming. "Genic" created by "anthropos"—us.

 

It is nothing more or less than a scam inflicted upon people for money and power; there is no scientific basis that human activities are damaging the global environment. We can pollute a city or a lake, but just barely... and of course, we should not... but the Earth and its natural mechanisms dwarf anything we can do short of a full-out nuclear exchange. And even then the Earth would rebuild itself to a life supporting state; we just wouldn't last long enough to see it.


The nature of Government is to expand its power, but here's the catch-- rational, productive, moral people need very little Government. They accept the protection of the police and military, and operate in the security of the courts and legal system, and that's all they need or want. Government has no power over people who do not aggress against others, who go about their business creating their own wealth and offering it for free trade. Government must create artificial needs in order to expand its power-- and that's exactly what they do. "Fear" is a great way to create a need, but an appeal to any emotion would do, and does.


Government is at its most repulsive when it takes advantage of the good in people and turns that good to its own purposes.


You're told that people have a "right" to a job, a "right" to medical care (it takes another leap when it specifies "affordable medical care"-- who decides what "affordable" is?), a "right" to a home and food... and the best parts of people, the best parts of human nature, respond to that rhetoric.



Now, if you'd like to know a secret that the typical Government will never teach its kids, follow along. They don't want you to know any of this; then again, they don't have to stop people from spilling the beans like this, because one little story isn't going to reverse all the Government disinformation we're inundated with from cradle to grave. At least, not yet.


Let's take the "right" to a job. How does a person get a job? Someone else has to "do" something. A blacksmith has to look around his shop and say, "Man, I sure could make more horseshoes if only I could get somebody else to pump the forge, carry in the coal, keep the quench tub filled..."


Already some assumptions arise: that people would buy—there's a market for—more horseshoes, and that he wants to make more. Maybe he's content with what he's producing, maybe there aren't enough horses around, and maybe neither. A point in passing is that the blacksmith is the best guy to decide all that, not the shoemaker, not the baker, not the ladies' sewing society, not the town council, not the sheriff, and for sure not the sheriff in a town ten miles away; none of them knows more about his business and his ambition than he does.


So either he hires a kid to do his dirty work or maybe he doesn't. And maybe as part of the contract he'll pay the poor kid just enough to live BUT also teach him smithing. And maybe he talks to ten kids, and none of them takes the deal, or one does, or three do. If no one takes the deal he ups the pay or he doesn't; and if several do then he picks the kid he wants, on whatever basis he wants.


Say he takes a kid on, and the kid does all the things, and he gets to eat and sleep under a roof, and he learns to make horseshoes... but one day the kid decides he wants to make tools. He likes knives, axes, adzes, hammers, chisels, and thinks he could make them and sell them. Either his boss can teach him that or he can't. If not, he has a decision to forget it and stay, or to find another smith to work for who can train him; if so then he strikes a deal to use the smith's tools and forge, make his own kind of stuff, and pay the smith a percentage of the tool sales-- and the smith takes that deal, or again, not.


Anything "could" happen... but history has shown that when people act freely everyone benefits. Look what DID happen through history. You notice, just by the way, through all this that no one has forced anyone else to do anything. Free choices freely offered, freely accepted or rejected, is what has driven this narrative so far.


So one day there's a knock at the door. It's the sheriff, and he tells the smith he has this kid who has a "right" to a job. The smith replies that he has the right to do as he pleases as long as he violates no laws, and he'll hire some kid, maybe that one and maybe not, if he pleases to hire a kid and not before.


The sheriff informs him that there is now a law that installs everyone with the "right to a job" and "it's been decided" that this kid has a right to a smith's helper job. If the smith doesn't take the kid on as his helper-- he is in violation of the law.


Well, the smith cannot quite understand how he can be made into a criminal overnight simply by going about his biz the way he chooses to, and asks, "Or else what, if I don't?"


The sheriff steps aside to allow the smith to see three deputies with cocked and loaded crossbows. They aren't pointed at the smith, but they sure could be, in one second... or else THAT, is the answer. It's the Law, sir.


Another decision point, and the smith decides not to acquire three grisly perforations-- he takes the kid on. Maybe the kid does well and maybe he doesn't, but it's not a good start to a relationship, and even a kid can see the state of things and wonder what the point is to improving himself if all it gets him is bullied by armed thugs in the name of The Law...


...and perhaps that point is driven further when the sheriff comes by again and informs the smith that everyone has the "right" to cheap horseshoes, and he will sell them only for X price instead of the usual 2X. This time there are no armed deputies standing there, but the smith is bright enough to realize that they could be, on command, if he doesn't submit again. So he goes back to try to figure out how to cut costs, or make do with less, or take less care in manufacture...


At that point the kid may see the point of becoming a deputy and maybe a sheriff, but somehow, maybe just not a blacksmith. They only produce and trade goods. The sheriff produces nothing, but what a sweet job... and the more laws there are, the more sheriffs there will have to be to enforce them... and therefore fewer producers... which is another story. Time for the wrap.


The right to produce and trade freely... infringes no one else's rights. The "right" to a job... elsewise...


That's how you tell the difference between a right and a "right"; how many wrongs it takes to make and maintain them.


—Ron Copis

 

 

 
Ex- and post-hippies in charge


Here's the wing-thing that confuses me... when I was coming up the Left was all about "do your own thing" and the Right was "do as you're told."  This would have been a left-wing piece in the 1960s-70s...(!?)

But now the ex- and post-hippies are in charge, and they're much more about "do as you're told"-- even more than the 1960s-70s right-wing ever was.  So you tell me which wing it is.  I just say I'm "libertarian" which
means something to me even if no one else gets it.  It is NOT "moderate" and it is NOT "between" the Left and the Right.  It's radical AND reactionary, conservative in some ways and liberal in others, and though it's not formally in the mainstream it reflects more of what most people think and feel than people realise.  I have never gotten anyone to disagree with me intelligently.  At some point they just insult me and walk away, every single time.  You've seen it.

It took years of mass brainwashing for this state of affairs to exist...

 

—Ron Copis

 
A 200X Effect
Written by Ron Copis   

Well, I got tired of reading about Nova Scotia so I thought I'd look into my fiver year prediction, which has about three years left on it.  I'm glad I said "within" five years because it may be less after all...the whole thing's falling apart on a molecular level in terms a high-schooler can understand.  There's a "perfect storm" of scientific findings converging that will blast it all into the dust.

Not soon enough for the House bill... probably not soon enough for the Senate bill either... maybe soon enough to VOTE in 2010 and almost certainly by 2012 though.

(My objections to the Waxman-Markey screw-up are 95% procedural and not so much related to the science/dearth thereof.  Anybody who voted "Yes" on a 1200pp-- oops, suddenly 1500pp-- bill they were neither allowed to nor able to read is a screw-up, end of story.  But onward...)

You know from spectrometry that atoms and molecules are very specific as to what wavelengths they absorb and what wavelengths they emit.  In fact you can identify any "stuff" by observing that.  The plain fact is that once there's "enough" CO2 in the atmosphere, virtually all the specific infrared wavelengths it absorbs are going to BE absorbed and the warming effects of CO2 come to a halt, or a drastic decline, even as the amount of CO2 doubles.

I mean, this is simple shit, folks.  I can think of 15 analogies that even a Democrat can understand.

Also there's some wavelength overlap between CO2 and water vapour, such that the hotter it is and the more water vapour there is, the more CO2 is beaten out of the game.  CO2 is somewhat to vastly outnumbered by H2O in most locations.

Also, at some point even the dimmest bulbs are going to understand that there is an immense difference in the heat-carrying and heat-conducting capacities of the atmosphere and the oceans; that's too obvious to ignore much longer.  To say-- as "they" are-- that the atmosphere is heating up the ocean instead of the other way around has sounded inane from the start to anyone with half a brain.  Those with smaller fractions of brain will catch up eventually.  All the moaning about "sea ice" and its observed reduction is going to backfire.

(Much as all the rhetoric designed to panic people into favouring the stimulus bill and getting it passed before the economy recovered naturally...actually scared people into making decisions that deepened and lengthened the recession far more than the stimulus helped it, but that's another
story...)

You can survive in 5ºC air a LOT longer than you can survive in 5ºC water. Everyone who watched "Titanic" knows that.

It's about the same with dissolved CO2 content between ocean and atmosphere, but that one's even easier to understand because it involves beer.  A cold beer goes flat as it warms.  Even UAW members know that.
When they "get" that it's the dreaded CO2 making those tiny bubbles in their beer they may also "get" that "warming" increases the amount of CO2 the oceans (and soils) emit, rather than CO2 causing ocean warming.

Finally, what happens when you "backcast"-- that is, run a forecasting model backwards so as to arrive at conditions 100 years ago, then compare to recorded reality-- is other than convincing.  Also easy to understand.  All that fact needs to do is to become more widely known.

Is it any wonder that the urgency for "climate change measures" looks so desperate...?  Like to get Government-increasing legislation done before the truth of things catches up?

Really all that remains now is to review media trends and predict when they're going to start screaming about the coming Ice Age-- again.

 

###


More facts:

1.  Currently CO2 = 0.0378% of the atmosphere
2.  Before the industrial revolution = 0.0280% of the atmosphere
3.  AGW advocates argue that a CO2 concentration increase of 0.009% has heated the world over a half a degree C

As C and F are less useful for this next step let's go to Kelvin. Average global temperature is about 290K (0C = 273K so add the 2007 average 57F/13.9C to make 287K).  Round this to 300K, such that up one
K is a +0.33% difference.  Let's call the warming so far +0.2%...

...so what they're saying is that a less than 0.01% increase in CO2 has resulted in a +0.2% increase in temperature.

That's a 200X effect.

Man.  Can we use that to generate electricity somehow?  CO2 (burned carbon) looks like a better energy source than coal (unburned carbon)...(!) How could we have got that backwards?

 

—Ron Copis

 
Don't Mess with The Shootenger
Written by Ron Copis   

 

Never hire a glass of water. They're always calling in "drunk".

I don't see myself as "divorced". It's more like being retired from harness and put out to stud.

Why would you want to fix a balanced meal? "If it ain't broke..."

Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Cry, and they laugh even harder. Bazterdz...

If there is a punctuation mark called a slash, why isn't there one called a stab? Or maybe there is and it's not called that. Which still doesn't change the question.

"Organic Popcorn." Cripes!! Ten bucks to the first guy who shows me what INorganic popcorn is.

If you got attacked by a giraffe, would you ever tell anybody?
(An overly quick answer either way probably means you should re-think it.)

When you're really tired of hearing someone babble senselessly all the time, interrupt them and ask their opinion on whether you should give up drinking blood. That just plain flat out works, every time.

"Telephone". Hmmm. What *would* you tell a phone-- "quit ringing"...?

Speaking of, in the elevator just now someone's cell phone rang. They pulled it out and started talking. Something was odd so I looked at the phone-- and it looked back!! Creepy! This cell phone is STARING at me...
"What the hell IS that thing?"
"Hmmm? Oh. It's just my eyePhone."
Well, it made sense then. Sort of.

Note to Self: Never get into a staring contest with an eyePhone unless it's low on charge.

If a zombie and a half can eat a brain and a half in a day and a half, how long does it take one zombie to eat one brain?

I should never read "People" magazine.
No-- let's take it further. I should never even look at the cover.
(Do you really want to know?)
(Okay... look at one someday and try to invent a new TV Reality Show that's guaranteed to offend well over ten million people. For me that's like losing at birling.)


If you're being "diagnostic", does that mean you're not sure whether you'll die?

Speaking of which, variations on "Life is hard and then you die" are so inane. What if you didn't die. Not only would Life be harder (or female-doggier), but a lot more crowded too.

From the famous fabulous Everybody Knows Dept.:
"The pen is mightier than the sword."
Right.
Now, what's the full quote...?
"Beneath the rule of men entirely great, The pen is mightier than the sword."
Suddenly it means something quite else, do you notice.
Almost the opposite...

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave..."
...when we're BORN...(!) and it just keeps getting weirder from there.

I'd like a refund on yesterday. I shelled out a good honest 24 hours and look what I got in return.

A conspiracy to have an automotive accident would be a collision collusion.

Exercise your Right to VOOT in 2010.
(Voot = VOTE to BOOT them all out)
OK that's a little extreme. And unfair. Let's institute a point system. Any Congressman accruing over 100 "points" gets voted out, allocated thusly as examples:
--Over $10 million in public funds per year on personal luxuries... 5 pts
--Caught in extramarital affair... 5 pts
--Committing vehicular homicide while intoxicated... 5 pts
--Eating a live puppy in front of children... 5 pts
--Voting in favour of the Waxman-Markey "Cap-and-Trade" bill last week... 9000 pts
Hmmm. Yes...
...yes, something like that would work fine. Can we all agree? Good. Now it's just a matter of detail.

I sure hope I'm not being too subtle again...

 
How do people get a home and food?
Written by Ron Copis   

 

How do people get a home and food?  They work.  They trade their time and effort for money.  They produce things people want to buy.  The people they work for sell what they produce.  All that only works when those products get bought by other people, and that only happens when people at large have enough money to buy them.

Everything and everybody is connected.  Not by "humanity and compassion"-- but by the system of voluntary trade.

I'm thinking of what happened when a celebrity athlete bought his mom a $75 million house.  (He's a pro boxer, lives in Atlanta, so I heard a lot about this.)

First off it's "his" money... to do with as he wishes... and without that principle held sacred it all falls down.  Without the right to own and use one's own property freely no one works and tries to own things.  Again, why should they?

Second off it's not as if he gave that money to other rich guys and that house magically appeared.  No, he traded it to a bunch of Joe Beercans who traded their time and labour for that money.  I'm not going to do any complicated math here-- either he gave 75,000 workers $1000 each, or 750 workers $100,000 each, and more likely it landed somewhere in the middle, but a lot of people had jobs-- and "a home and food"-- for a good long ol' time.  Never mind the people who got paid to maintain it after.  I'm pretty sure his mom didn't mow the lawn or vacuum the pool, y'know?

And for all this he got excoriated for "waste" and "excess" and "not giving back to the community"... ...leaving me sitting there dazed and amazed at all the retarded loudmouths who had NO IDEA how anything actually works in this life, didn't care who knew it, and somehow got listened to.

That's just one example, and a good one, especially for me, as I cannot imagine trading any of my money to watch a guy get in a ring and slug the bejeez out of some other guy, or throw a ball around, for instance-- and yet, a lot of people do, and I see that as their biz and their choices.

See, if that kind of thing can happen you have prosperity, and if it cannot, no one has any.  The fastest way to kill prosperity for everyone is to punish wealth creation, and that's happening way too much in the form of taxes and regulation, in the name of giving everybody a home and food.

That's just plain backwards, but it sure is popular.

 

 
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