The articles posted may or may not reflect my views, but they're meant to stimulate thinking.
Asia
Chinese Pilots Fly at
Russia's Top Gun - Thomas Newdick
War Is Boring Chinese and Russian fighter
pilots have been testing their skills in an unprecedented series of maneuvers
in southeast Russia. Some observers have billed the Aviadarts exercise as a
Russian Top Gun—a reference to the U.S. Navy’s fighter tactics schoolhouse,
which the sailing branch established after losing a shocking number of pilots
during the Vietnam War. The reality is not as straightforward, but it’s
significant that Moscow is inviting foreign fighter jocks—the Chinese,
namely—to test their mettle against the best Russia has to offer.
Five Reasons the U.S.
Can't Beat China in Africa - Zachary Keck, TNI
Earlier this month,
President Barack Obama convened nearly fifty African heads of state in Washington,
DC for the first ever U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. As the largest event ever
held between a U.S. president and African heads of state, the summit was the
most visible expression of the Obama administration’s efforts to
reengage Africa, which began with the president’s trip to the
continent in the summer of 2013. This pivot to Africa is being driven in no
small part by a desire to counter China’s growing influence on the continent.
Climate Change
From “The Hill”, even California Democrats aren’t buying the climate BS Obama and Holdren are selling on drought: (h/t to WUWT reader “Green Sand”) Voters don’t hear the words “climate change” when Democrats in competitive races in California explain what’s …
Ebola
Six Big Lessons from
the Ebola Outbreak - Alex Berezow
The Ebola outbreak in West
Africa, which continues to rage and has now claimed the lives of more than 1100
people, offers some big lessons for America.
Economics
Recessions,
investment and total spending: an Austrian perspective – By Gerard Jackson
I think it’s pretty clear that Keynesians and their
votaries in the media have learnt nothing from the last recession. Their absolute
faith in the fallacy that consumption drives economies is sufficient proof of
that. Time and time again I keep reading that consumer spending is 70 per cent
or so of GDP which means, according to them, that if consumer spending falls
the economy will slide into recession. Austrian economics has continually
pointed out how dangerously wrong this view is. What really matters is total
spending, of which business spending is by far the largest and most important
component. The problem is that the commentariat unthinkingly swallowed the
fallacy that including spending between stages of production would be a case of
double-counting with the result that national income figures seriously
underestimate actual spending….
JR at Dissecting Leftism
*Böhm-Bawerk: Austrian Economist Who Said “No” to Big
Government* We live at a time when politicians and bureaucrats only know one
public policy: more and bigger government. Yet, there was a time when even
those who served in government defended limited and smaller government. One of
the greatest of these died one hundred years ago on August 27, 1914, the
Austrian economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk.Böhm-Bawerk is most famous as one of
the leading critics of Marxism and socialism in the years before the First World War. He is equally famous as one of the
developers of “marginal utility... more »
Are Dollar's Global Currency Days Numbered?
- Santiago Villa
It's not going to
happen tomorrow, in a year or even five years. But it's conceivable, even
likely, that within ten years, the U.S. dollar will cease to become the
reference currency for international transactions. The reason for this is that
the U.S. government and American judges have politicized the dollar to an
extreme in a world where the country backing it is no longer as dominant as it
once was.
Energy
Policy makers can never resist the urge to “just do
something.” And it never works. Energy policies are
faddish. From the energy-independence moonshine of the corn-ethanol scam to the
latest 645-page slate of regulations the EPA wants to inflict on the domestic
electricity-generation sector, the supposed threats have varied. Back in the
1970s, the claim was that we were too dependent on Arab oil (a claim that we
continue to hear today). These days, in addition to the never-ending blather
about “energy independence,” we have the spurious claim from the Obama
administration that yet another layer of EPA rules on U.S. industry will make a
dramatic difference when it comes to global climate change……
If wood-burning power stations are less eco-friendly than
coal, we are getting the search for clean energy all wrong - On Saturday my
train was diverted by engineering works near Doncaster. We trundled past some
shiny new freight wagons decorated with a slogan: “Drax — powering tomorrow:
carrying sustainable biomass for cost-effective renewable power”.
Serendipitously, I was at that moment reading a report by the chief scientist
at the Department of Energy and Climate Change on the burning of wood in Yorkshire
power stations such as Drax. And I was feeling vindicated. A year ago I wrote
in these pages that it made no sense for the consumer to subsidise the burning
of American wood in place of coal, since wood produces more carbon dioxide for
each kilowatt-hour of electricity. The forests being harvested would take four
to ten decades to re-grow, and this is the precise period over which we are
supposed to expect dangerous global warming to emerge. It makes no sense to
steal beetles’ lunch, transport it halfway round the world, burning diesel as
you do so, and charge hard-pressed consumers double the price for the power it
generates……
Blowing Our Dollars in the Wind – Viv Forbes
Wind energy produces costly, intermittent, unpredictable
electricity. But Government subsidies and mandates have encouraged a massive
gamble on wind investments in Australia - over $7 billion has already been
spent and another $30 billion is proposed. This expenditure is justified by the
claim that by using wind energy there will be less carbon dioxide emitted to
the atmosphere which will help to prevent dangerous global warming. Incredibly, this claim is not supported by
any credible cost-benefit analysis - a searching enquiry is well overdue. Here
is a summary of things that should be included in the analysis……..
There's an excellent article in the Copenhagen Post which I'm going to reprint here
in full. It's by a retired high court judge called Peter Rørdam. I'm reprinting
it because apart from the place names, every last detail applies to the UK wind
industry too. And – from what I've seen personally – the Australian one. And
the US and Canadian ones as well. The
reason the industry is so corrupt is quite simply that without the lies it
tells as a matter of course and without the cosy stitch-ups it arranges with
regulators and politicians at taxpayers' expense, it simply would not exist…….
The central climate fallacy is that the unknowns are known
- By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
What is science for? Its end and object is to stretch out
a fumbling hand for the truth by a humble and eternally-unsatisfied attempt to
constrain uncertainties.
The scientific method is hungry curiosity, followed by
acute observation, followed by careful measurement, followed by the meticulous
application of pre-existing theory to the results, followed by the detailed
drafting and reviewed publication of a hypothesis, followed by other
scientists’ attempts to overturn the hypothesis, which is either discarded or
slowly accorded credence to the extent that it has survived the process of
error elimination……
Wind Turbine Noise & Adverse Health Effects - By Michael Stroup
The Big Lie of the “Consensus View” on Global Warming By
Michael Stroup Filed under Global Warming on July 30, 2014 with Leave a Comment
How often do you read or hear the claim that a “scientific consensus” exists
that global warming is directly affected by mankind’s actions? This influence
is called “anthropogenic global warming,” or AGW. Further, how often do you
hear how people who fail to agree with this AGW consensus are “deniers,” akin
to someone who believes the Earth is flat. The informed critics of AGW deniers
will cite a scholarly review of the climatology literature that reveals how 97%
of the climate science community supports the AGW theory. But, if you read the
paper for yourself (it is only six pages long, with some simple graphs), you
will see that these critics are lying. Here is the gist of this influential
study:…
Europe
Britain's Role in Europe Is to Be a Pain Clive Crook
If I were a Scot, I'd be leaning toward voting for
independence in next month's referendum, on the logic that the advantages of
self-government outweigh the drawbacks of being a small state. How does that
logic apply to Britain's choice about remaining a member of the European Union?
Foreign Policy
Genocide! A Christian Holocaust - Alan Caruba
Syrian victims of Islamic State slaughter By Alan Caruba
In the last century and now this one, I have lived long enough to have been
alive when the Nazis killed six million European Jews and another five million
other “enemies of the state” that included unionists, homosexuals, Seventh Day
Adventists, and any others that ran afoul of that hateful and hate-filled
regime. There were genocides in the last and this century. The killing of Kurds
by Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator who used poison gas—a weapon of mass
destruction—against them is largely forgotten by everyone but the…..
Why We Fight Wars Paul Krugman
A century has passed since the start of World War I, which many people at the time declared was “the war to end all wars.” Unfortunately, wars just kept happening. And with the headlines from Ukraine getting scarier by the day, this seems like a good time to ask why.
A century has passed since the start of World War I, which many people at the time declared was “the war to end all wars.” Unfortunately, wars just kept happening. And with the headlines from Ukraine getting scarier by the day, this seems like a good time to ask why.
Why Americans Go to War Max Boot
I wonder what it says about the modern “progressive”
mindset that Paul Krugman can only imagine two reasons to wage war: for profit
or for the political advantage of the leader who initiates hostilities. He
(rightly) debunks the idea of waging war to make money in most cases, but is
sympathetic to the idea that some leaders initiate hostilities to bolster
domestic support–he thinks Vladimir Putin is one such today and that the
Chinese leaders could be another example in the future although why he thinks
that George W. Bush belongs in the same category is unclear.
Media and Science
How the media mis-represents everyday science
- Anthony Watts
Joel O’Bryan writes in WUWT Tips and Notes The LA Times
has the follwing lead story on it webpage: “Climate change reflected in altered
Missouri River flow, report says”
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-missouri-river-20140817-story.html Quoting
from the LA Times, “Climate shifts may be causing …
Middle East
The Common Enemy in Iraq - George
Packer
The New Yorker Suddenly, a common enemy has joined
mutually distrustful players in the making of a coalition against ISIS—just the
kind of multilateralism that the President favors. As this month’s events bore
out, such an effort requires American leadership. Obama said as much in his
August 7th speech, but it’s easy to sense his reluctance to get dragged back
into the sinkhole of Iraq and the region. The speed with which he declared the
Yazidi crisis over—while thousands of people, including those too old or too
weak to walk, remain behind on Mt. Sinjar—suggested a de... more »
Return of the Global War on Terror
- Eli Lake
Barack Obama has
spent most of his presidency trying to narrow Bush’s war on terror. But with
the new campaign in Iraq, the big war is back.
Russia
Why Won't We Name Putin's Invasion?
- Michael Weiss
Vladimir Putin now seems to be relying on the Eddie Murphy "wasn't me" excuse, no doubt with the understanding that having a bald-faced lie exposed by independent witnesses matters not when the rest of the world seems unwilling to do anything about it.
The National Russian president Vladimir Putin shows every intention of keeping the world guessing about his ultimate intentions in Ukraine.
Scientific Integrity is an Oxymoron
Pointless Ohio State study predicts the obviouswith models – fish will die as streams dry out -
Anthony Watts
Even more troubling, why does a waste of time study like
this get funded by the Department of Defense Strategic Environmental Research
and Development Program? I don’t want defense money going to modeling studies
on fish and streams that tell …
No comments:
Post a Comment