36 Comments

Sorry to see that you have finished your last class at CU, but understand. I had hoped to drop in for a session of intellectual stimulation, but couldn't make it happen. Good luck as you move on.

Thanks for everything.

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Thanks Joe!

It was great to have you in a few of my classes 👍🙏

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Paired with polling on the higher ed matter, much of which shows a decline in respect for many undergrad degrees, the political shift seems to indicate Democrats are picking up an increasing share of a sharply declining market.

In business terms, that's how one goes out of business.

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Good luck on the next phase.

FYI, if you are in London and somehow ManCity steps on a banana peel I'm no one will ever trace it back to you.

:-)

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We can hope. But money talks, and wins matches!

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Roger, it strikes me that the word "politics" has become a misnomer. Our two legacy "political" parties are no longer true to core policies; they have become factions. The Founding Fathers warned us against factions of the sort in Great Britain, where Whigs and Tories fought over divisions of wealth and power. Yet this hyper-partisan division into factions appears to be where the country is headed. Politics used to be a transactional process: Everett Dirksen supported Lyndon Johnson's Civil Rights Bill in return for judicial and commission appointments, that sort of thing. Nowadays. working "across the aisle" has become anathema; better to oppose than to betray one's faction. The public discourse suffers and the good of the country is neglected as our solons talk past each other.

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Yes, I agree. Politics requires compromise. In that light the recent goings on related t the speaker will be interesting to watch. Are they a signal of the return of politics?

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When I was 15 I told my (medical professor) brother that Richard Nixon had been stitched up. He thought I had gone completely insane. That's how the world works. The demonisation of Nixon in the media was absolute.

I was right.

'Senior FBI* official who helped bring down President Richard Nixon dies aged 95

He secretly guided the Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, who with colleague Carl Bernstein pursued the story of the 1972 break-in at the Democratic national committee's headquarters at the Watergate office building. (Mark) Felt was instrumental in their revelations of the Nixon presidential administration's campaign of spying and sabotage against its political adversaries.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/19/watergate-deep-throat-dies

* FBI- COINTELPRO (it was COINTELPRO that was doing the spying and sabotage)

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Roger:

I have done an analysis of our changing climate which proves that CO2 has no climatic effect. All of the warming that has occurred has been due to decreases in the amount of industrial SO2 aerosol pollution in our atmosphere due to "Clean Air" legislation, and the banning of the burning of fossil fuels due to Net Zero activities.

See: "Scientific proof that CO2 does NOT cause global warming"

https://doi.org/10.30574/wjarr.2023.21.3.0884

This has serious implications for our future climate. The cleaner our air becomes, the HOTTER it will get.

Your thoughts on this?

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This is a good topic topic to carry forward over at the ongoing CO2/climate/thread: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-carbon-dioxide-emissions-change

This one will soon be buried, thanks!

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I cannot reach that site. you have peaked my curiosity. Is the URL correct?

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No, unfortunately, it is not correct.

Try this:

https://doi.org/10.30574/wjarr.2024.21.3.0884

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Got it, thanks

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was this paper peer-reviewed?

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Barry:

The Journal states that "all manuscripts are subjected to rapid peer review".

It was received on 8 Feb, revised on 16 Mar, and accepted on 19 Mar.

Beyond that, the INEVITABLE warming from decreased levels of atmospheric SO2 aerosol pollution is totally ignored, and instead is claimed to be due to increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

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Interesting proposal. Definitely going to add this to the possibilities suggested for causes of warming and for irrelevance of Co2. One of the WORST mistakes of the IPCC is refusing to consider all possible causes of the phenomenon they are looking at. Utterly unscientific. But then, the IPCC isn't looking for a scientific explanation, it is printing a series of propaganda pieces designed to push the public into abandoning fossil fuels.

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Thanks, appreciate it. That's all I needed to know.

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Roger: Just had a chance to review the whole substack. Coincidentally, on your AEI link I have led local friends to the very same 12 minute segment. We live in a town (Qualicum Beach in BC, Canada) where RCP 8.5 is still the guiding "buggy whip" in their Community Climate Change Adaptation plan.

They are also contemplating joining a "SueBigOil" class action suit.... a not unusual phenomenon these days. Just think what could be achieved on this file if the two "saner" sides of the debate could agree to work together and cut out the Lawyers !

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If these educated people tend to hold more positions of both authority and power, then the Covid experience, the Climate Change narrative, the "transition" to EVs and renewables, the quality of DEI hires, and the utter madness of "gender transition " issues in schools and universities all indicate that these educated people can be powerfully, tragically and blindly wrong and can cause enormous damage to the economy and disruption to the lives of ordinary, and less educated people. They should not be trusted with power.

Let's hear it for plain old common sense.

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We definitely need a better integration of expertise AND common sense, recognizing that experts do not hold a monopoly on either.

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Roger: You have a lot more grateful students out here as well. Enjoy the "second life"!

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Len, Much appreciated!

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Say Hi to Bjorn. :)

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Good links. I'd seen most of the net CO2 emissions eternality-related ones already.

I know not everybody can do everything all the time, but I still sense too much problem identification relative to finding cost effective problem solving.

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I found Lewis Menand's article on academic freedom to be disingenuous in the extreme. He ignores the violent uprising on campuses. He talks about arrests at Columbia "last month" but ignores the fact that Jewish students are not safe there now. He doesn't mention the campuses that have had to shut down in person classes or cancel graduations.

Consider this gem:

"The pro-Palestinian demonstrators who created the conditions that the Jewish students allege are antisemitic are immunized by the First Amendment."

Jewish students have been physically attacked and the environment is so threatening that they have had to leave certain campuses.

Academic freedom is in less danger than other basic freedoms on campus. Louis Menand is willfully blind to what is happening on many campuses, and the source of this danger: The universities themselves created the current environment.

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It did read as if it was written a few weeks ago.

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Great AEI presentation and Q & A with Steve Hayward. Maybe there is a small ray of sunshine out there, and I think you are right to focus on energy policy rather than climate change. The former is where the economic rubber meets the road. The latter is conveniently protean and emotive, and under the control of people who don’t and won’t do the science. So, yes, genuflect to that as needed but push ahead on real-world objectives like more nukes and nat gas. IMHO.

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Yes! The "12 minute segment" was spot-on, but don't miss the follow-up Q&A with Steven Hayward, and questions from Mark Mills.

Roger, please link your X posts to THB, or at least the ones which you think add to what we see here.

Keep up the good work!

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Thanks!

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As a practical matter for any given person, maybe so, but we can't conceptually ignore climate change. And even there, doesn't even there getting incentives right for CO2 emitting energy use (including carbon capture and sequestration) right important?

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One of my problems (and it's mine, not that of the wider community) is that "climate change" is not well-defined. Climate is always changing; what's important is which parameters of climate are changing, how well we understand them and can measure them over time, and draw lessons from them to inform our actions. But (as the speakers said) climate change modeling is a "wicked problem" and (as Roger showed in his slides) our modeling is less than satisfactory. The biggest business opportunity seems to be in "weather attribution" where every tornado or flood tide is proof of a larger trend that we can't observe directly. I find all this unprofitable and thus welcome the emphasis on a pragmatic program like energy policy. Cheers.

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More educated does not mean smarter. I'll take the opinion of a four year BSc grad over that of a PhD in underwater grievance studies any day.

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Often the opinions of plain country people with education in the school of hard knocks have more good sense in their little fingers than prize-winning academics. And they can fix the toilet.

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Re the Moss graph: if the bottom left of the chart all moved to 1000kwh, what does that portend for decarbonization? Congrats on the Norwegian honor!

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A very important question!

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