Society in General

Left Coast Climate Delusion Ends in Flames

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Satellite images of wildfires burning in Southern California By NBC Staff • Published January 11, 2025

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. writes in Wall Street Journal End of a Climate Delusion.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Amid California’s fires, voters wake up from the dream that green pork is a solution.

CO2 emitted into the atmosphere is rapidly and, for all practical purposes, uniformly distributed around the planet.

I may be stating the obvious but it needs to be pointed out. Voters and even political leaders are surprisingly poorly informed on this point. Emissions cuts in California don’t have any significant effect on California’s climate. They also have no global effect. California’s cuts are too small relative to the global whole; they also are largely illusory.

Emitting industries leave the state. They don’t stop emitting. If California imports Canadian hydro to charge its electric vehicles, consumers elsewhere have to burn more coal and gas. If Californians drive EVs, more gasoline is free to be burned by others, releasing more CO2 that influences climate change in California and everywhere else.

Green-energy subsidies do not reduce emissions. This will be news to millions of California voters. It contradicts a central tenet of state policy. It isn’t news to the actual enactors of these subsidies. A National Research Council study sponsored by congressional Democrats in 2008 concluded that such handouts were a “poor tool for reducing greenhouse gases” and called for carbon taxes instead.

Unfortunately, the incoming Obama administration quickly discovered it favored climate taxes only when Republicans were in charge. Backers would later engage in flagrant lying to promote Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, knowingly citing bogus predictions that its trillion-dollar spending profusion would reduce emissions.

A 2019 University of Oregon study had already revealed the empirical truth: Green energy doesn’t replace fossil fuels, it enables more energy consumption overall. That same year the EPA calculated that the potential emissions savings from subsidizing electric vehicles had been offset five times over by the pickup truck and SUV boom Team Obama facilitated to assure the success of its auto bailout.

American Association for the Advancement of Science study finds that of 1,500 “climate” policies announced around the world, a mere 63, or 4%, produce any reduction in emissions.

Last year, the premier journal Science put a nail in the question: 96% of policies supported worldwide as “reducing” emissions failed to do so, consisting mostly of handouts to green-energy interests.

And yet certain Journal readers still assail me with the epithet “denier.” They confuse my criticism of Democratic hypocrisy with my imagined views on climate science. As I’ve written back to many, “Don’t think politicians haven’t figured this out about you. That’s why they can give us unsustainable corporate welfare boondoggles and call it climate policy.”

A CNN moderator Saturday urged viewers to vote in an online poll on whether the California disaster should be blamed on climate change or poor leadership. Notice the non sequitur: as if climate change is an excuse for not acting against fire risk.

By all means, let politicians proclaim a “climate crisis” or any other rhetorical flourish if it helps mobilize support for public actions that actually serve a useful purpose. But a prerevolutionary situation has been building in California for two decades, starting with the Third World blackouts in late 2000 not because of any shortage of power but because of large helpings of political cowardice.

A decision in 2019 authorized yet more Third World blackouts instead of reasonably shielding utilities from lawsuit risk over fires their power lines might be accused of contributing to. One result, predictably, has been a proliferation of backyard generators, which increase fire risk.

Californians are stuck adapting in the ways left open to them. Since 2017, half a million have fled Los Angeles County.

Two social technologies might help but the state has been intent on denying itself their advantages. One is a functioning insurance market. If you can’t afford the insurance, you can’t afford the house. Get ready, instead, for a torrent of federal and state money to help residents, some of them wealthy, rebuild in high-risk fire zones.

The other is a functioning market in water. Five gallons to produce a walnut probably isn’t tenable under any realistic system of water pricing. If water were properly valued, municipalities would also rapidly discover the logic of building aquifers to capture seasonal runoff. A thousand things would change if water were priced to flow to its most highly valued uses.

Here’s another concept: Climate change can exist and yet be an insignificant variable.

In Southern California’s Mediterranean climate, anytime 100-mile-an-hour winds start blowing embers toward densely packed housing developments, a conflagration is certain. The only answer then is to have the manpower and resources ready to put fires out as quickly as they start.

I’ve written repeatedly about climate and energy policies in the Western world being a colossal example of “sophisticated state failure,” in which attempts to address complex problems yield only a succession of boondoggles and economic crises. If California voters don’t wise up now, they never will.

 

 

Canada’s Choice: Elite Globalist or Common Sense Canadian

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Trump will soon fill a 4-year WH vacancy known as the “Biden/Harris Administration.” Meanwhile federal governance in Ottawa is shut down by Trudeau resigning without leaving but also suspending parliament.  There being no one at the helm is eerily similar to the US adrift, and a fitting close to the Trudeau decade. Jamie Sarkonak goes to the core of the upcoming election in his National Post article It doesn’t matter to Mark Carney if Canada survives.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images

As a member of the global elite, he will always be free
from the consequences of his political actions.

The problem Mark Carney, likely Liberal leader-to-be, will always run into is this: his fate doesn’t depend on a successful Canada.

Carney announced his leadership run Thursday. Odds are good he’s going to win. He’s not as recognizable as his only real competition, potential candidate and former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, but he doesn’t share her bruised record of inflating the deficit to multi-billion dollar highs, and last week’s polling shows that more people are open to voting for him than for her.

I hope he wins the party’s support. The Liberals aren’t likely to resonate with the population by running an out-of-touch cabinet minister in the next federal election — and they’re certainly less likely to do so by running an out-of-touch global elite who left small-time federal politics behind for a career at the pinnacle of international poshdom.

Yes, Carney is Canadian. But he’s also a citizen of Ireland,
and through it the European Union,
as well as a national of the United Kingdom.

He can leave this country any time he wants, and he already has: after serving as governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013, he moved on to head the Bank of England. Now, he’s embedded in the international ecosystem as a climate finance adviser at the United Nations (among other things, he’s a strong advocate for mandatory climate disclosures by banks).

Oh, and according to his World Economic Forum bio — another mark of borderless eliteness — he is also the following: “an external member of the Board of Stripe, a member of the Global Advisory Board of PIMCO, Harvard University, Rideau Hall Foundation, Bilderberg, the boards of Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Hoffman Institute for Global Business and Society at INSEAD, Cultivo, as well as Senior Counsellor of the MacroAdvisory Partners, Advisor of the Watershed, and Chair of Chatham House, the Group of Thirty and also Advisory Board Chair for Canada 2020.”  Us rubes have no idea what most of that even means.

Carney might call himself an “outsider,” and it’ll be true — in the sense that he is not currently in the Trudeau government’s cabinet. But he’s still very much an elite, one who has advised the Liberal party, and one whose well-being doesn’t depend on local happiness and prosperity.

And everyone filling out a ballot next election will know it.

Different people have different terms for this. Freeland wrote a book on the new richesse mondiale, calling them plutocrats. Circa 2013, she was warning the rest of us that the global plutocracy might one day end up turning into a system of crony capitalist “insiders”; perhaps an aristocracy. Carney’s not Bill-Gates rich, but he’s still part of the global upper class.

Chrystia Freeland is also a Trustee on the WEF Board.

Former prime minister Stephen Harper put it in more digestible terms in his 2018 book, “Right Here, Right Now”: there are people who live “anywhere,” and there are people who live “somewhere.” “Anywheres” are cosmopolitan types who usually have professional, internationally oriented careers. “Somewheres” live and work closer to where they grew up, and share more of their values with people of a similar, localized background. The former tends to look down on nationalism; the latter depends on it.

Carney counts among the “anywheres” of Canadian society; yes, he’s got the passport, but he’s got more in common with a foreign banking executive who makes an annual Davos pilgrimage than he does with regular Superstore-shopping Canadians.

We “somewheres,” on the other hand, can’t just up and leave
in the face of turmoil because our entire life is here.

Our friends and families are here. Our savings and investments (if we have them) are in CAD; our partly-paid mortgages are tied to Canadian land; our children’s education depends on the quality of Canadian schools; our safety depends on Canadian laws; our job prospects suffer when low-wage foreign labour is allowed to flood our local markets. We’re not being forced to leave, but the price of relocating is prohibitively high.

Carney’s Monday appearance on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show was revealing in that way: he targeted his pre-audition pitch to the world through an American late-night show that treated him with the same humorous fascination as it would a fuzzy exotic animal. It was a soft and unserious interview because the people our former central banker is campaigning toward aren’t Canadian and aren’t witnessing the country’s dire situation firsthand.

Poilievre’s appearances on Dr. Jordan Peterson’s American-produced podcast were of a whole different category; both men are Canadian and can talk about Canadian issues with the weight and care they deserve.

None of this is to say that the upper crust of society should stay out of politics — many great leaders come from the elite class, including on the conservative side of politics. But after years of regular Canadians being the low-priority afterthought of a trust-fund supported, second-generation prime minister who seemed happiest at G7 photoshoots and Gavin-Newsom meetups, the animal spirits are hungering for a leader who truly has skin in the game.

And yes, I’d count Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre among the “somewheres.” He’s had an entirely Canadian career, he isn’t gunning for CV-padding UN advisory roles, his ongoing career doesn’t depend on pleasing the moral sensibilities of the world’s politically active, post-national liberals, and he doesn’t seem to think that pre-election media courting should be performed for an international audience.

If the ship that is Canada starts sinking — and it’s been sitting alarmingly low in recent years — most of us are going down with it. Not Carney, who has and always will have a premium life raft, ready to isolate him from the consequences of his political actions. Which is exactly why I can’t wait to see him run.

World Institutions Pushing Pseudoscience

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

Since 1660, Nullius in verba was the Royal Society’s motto.  “Don’t take anyone’s word for it.”

Yesterday’s post showed how American science societies have taken to parroting climatist suppositions rather than applying critical intelligence to claims of a “climate crisis.” That unquestioning attitude betrays the science method expressed in the Royal Society’s motto.  Today presents Tilak Doshi describing how the same pattern appears in international institutions supposed to be objective reporters of natural conditions. His Daily Signal article is The Climate Agenda’s March Through the Institutions: Can It Be Stopped? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

A spate of stories in the media recently provides a remarkable illustration of how the globalist policy agenda of the climate-industrial complex has captured key international institutions and perverted their original organizational aims. From initially serving broad, laudable objectives for the welfare of their constituents, these institutions have been subverted over the years to serve the insistent pseudoscientific claims of climate alarmists.

The corruption of global institutions has, in turn, led to significant opposition that is becoming apparent. There is the prospect of an incoming Trump administration that is avowedly skeptical of the claims of an alleged climate crisis and is intent on exiting the U.N.’s Paris Agreement and its “net zero by 2050” policy target for a second time. This presents a welcome challenge to these corrupt institutions.

Will President Donald Trump and some of the populist parties in Europe
be capable of countering the entrenched globalist climate agenda?

The World Bank

On Oct. 17, Oxfam published a report that shockingly found that up to $41 billion in World Bank climate finance—nearly 40% of all climate funds disbursed by the World Bank over the past seven years—is “unaccounted for between the time projects were approved and when they closed.” In other words, no one knows how the money was used. There is no paper trail revealing where the money went or what the accomplished results were.

Green cronyism, ranging from the Solyndra debacle—the waste of almost half a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money on a failed solar farm project under President Barack Obama’s watch—to President Joe Biden’s duplicitously-named Inflation Reduction Act, which will unleash an estimated $1 trillion deluge of subsidies on favored “green” industries, is nothing new. But it is instructive to trace the World Bank’s decline from its honorable founding objectives to its current status as yet another institution advocating green causes.

Dr. Jim Yong Kim, reflecting the progressive virtues of Obama, who appointed him as president of the World Bank in 2012, imposed a ban on the financing of coal-fired power stations in 2013. This was followed by a ban on investments in all new upstream oil and gas resource development projects.

The distinguished economist Deepak Lal, a former research administrator of the World Bank, remarked that Kim incredulously “over-ruled the cost-benefit estimates of coal-based power over solar and wind-based power generation produced by his own economic staff, justifying this by reference to a wish to cut global emissions of greenhouse gases.”

The World Bank’s objections to the use of fossil fuels despite their importance to economic growth and poverty alleviation—which constitute its foundational institutional objectives—can be traced to the intellectual evolution of its management under James Wolfensohn during his decade as president (1995-2005).

Wolfensohn traced the arc from the old regime to the new. The old was represented by the “Washington consensus” of free markets, liberal trading regimes, sound money, and entrepreneurship associated with the classical liberalism of Adam Smith.

The new intellectual environment of the World Bank’s management—personified by Joseph Stiglitz, chief economist of the World Bank (1997-2000)—was defined by the theoretical failures of the free market, especially in accounting for the alleged negative climate impacts of fossil fuel use.

Stiglitz, a climate alarmist, wrote in a 2015 court brief for a failed climate lawsuit brought on behalf of a group of children against the U.S. federal government that “fossil fuel-based economies imposed ‘incalculable’ costs on society and shifting to clean energy will pay off.” [See Climatists Make Their Case by Omitting Facts]

Rupert Darwall, a former adviser to the United Kingdom’s chancellor of the exchequer and author of “Green Tyranny,” encapsulates the betrayal of the World Bank to its founding objectives as follows:

The World Bank’s mission has been subverted by green ideologues who assert that a low-carbon world benefits the world’s poor but fail to acknowledge that making energy much more costly increases poverty. The World Bank tags itself as ‘working for a world free of poverty’ … In making its choice between development and sustainability, the World Bank has decided it is going to try and ‘save the planet’ on the backs of the poor.

Yes, those are trillions of US$ they want to spend on an imaginary crisis.

By abdicating its founding principles for alleviating global poverty, the World Bank has taken a lead role among multilateral financial institutions in denying vast financial resources to poorer countries. It has hypocritically vetoed the right of developing countries to adopt the path of economic growth and environmental improvement that the now-rich countries had taken up successfully since the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago. The World Bank’s obsessive support for intermittent, low-yield renewable energy such as solar and wind power comes at the cost of its central charter to help the poor, an outcome that can only be described as egregiously unjust.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The U.N. IPCC issued a news release on Dec. 6 prior to the start of a “scoping” meeting in Kuala Lumpur of over 230 experts from 70 countries to draft outlines of working group contributions to the U.N. IPCC’s seventh Assessment Report (to be completed in 2029).

In the press release, the IPCC claimed that human combustion of fossil fuels “has resulted in more frequent and more intense extreme weather events that have caused increasingly dangerous impacts on nature and people in every region of the world.” This is contrary to the IPCC’s position hitherto, which is that almost all types of extreme weather events cannot be attributed with confidence to human activity.

The position of the IPCC regarding the lack of any link between climate change and extreme weather events is contrary to the almost daily headlines in the mainstream media attributing specific adverse weather events to “climate change.”

The work of eminent climate policy analysts Steve Koonin and Roger Pielke Jr. has done much to expose the pseudoscientific nature of what has been called “attribution studies.” These typically involve researchers who apply their climate models and historical observations to conclude that any particular weather event (say a hurricane or a drought) was made “more likely” or “more severe” by some magnitude in percentage units due to “human influence” (referring to the combustion of fossil fuels).

Based on the dubious claims of “attribution science,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a climate law last week that will require companies operating in New York state responsible for large amounts of planet-warming pollution to contribute to climate damage repair efforts. Under the new state law, companies responsible for the bulk of emissions from 2000 to 2018 will be on the hook for some $3 billion a year over the next 25 years.

Koonin cites the World Meteorological Organization that states that “any single event, such as tropical cyclone cannot be attributed to human-induced climate change, given the state of scientific understanding.” The IPCC’s “Special Report on Extreme Events” states that “Many weather and climate extremes are the result of natural climate variability … Even if there were no anthropogenic changes in climate, a wide variety of natural weather and climate extremes would still occur.”

Nonetheless, international organizations such as the World Bank and the IPCC have been increasingly politicized to serve climate hysteria. In this context, Chris Morrison of The Daily Sceptic finds that “[f]ears are growing that the IPCC could water down or even ditch its current finding that almost all types of extreme weather events have little or no sign of past human involvement, or any going forward to 2100.”

International Energy Agency

On Dec. 23, U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, released a report documenting how the International Energy Agency “has moved away from its energy security mission to become an “energy transition” cheerleader.”

The report finds that “French President [Emmanuel] Macron’s observation that IEA has become the ‘armed wing for implementing the Paris Agreement’ is regrettably true. With the many serious energy security challenges facing the world, however, IEA should not be a partisan cheerleader. What the world needs from IEA—and what it is not receiving now—is sober and unbiased analyses and projections that educate and inform policymakers and investors. IEA needs to remember why it was established and return to its energy security mission.”

The divergence of the IEA away from its original mission to advise policymakers in its member countries with sound analysis of trends in global energy supply and demand to becoming a “cheerleader” for radical net-zero emission policy targets has not gone unnoticed over recent years. I have written on the ideological approach adopted by the IEA in its advocacy for green causes here, here, and here.

When ideological advocacy becomes the measure of achievement for the IEA, the loss of credibility and soundness of its policy advice is only to be expected. The IEA’s messianic fervour for green technologies such as solar and wind power, “green” hydrogen, batteries, and electric vehicles prevents it from asking basic questions.

If it is true that drastically cutting back on fossil fuels is consistent with higher economic growth and increased productive employment, why does the IEA recommend policymakers force countries along “net-zero” pathways? Surely, if replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar energy and electric vehicles promotes growth and employment, then wouldn’t countries such as China and India naturally race toward this best of all possible worlds without expensive green subsidies and punitive anti-fossil fuel policies?

The Trumpian Revolution Looms

Nonprofit organizations reflect the needs of their funding members, and organizations such as the World Bank, IPCC, and IEA are no different. As their funding is primarily from the U.S. and the EU, it is not surprising that they manifest the “climate emergency” predilections of the Biden administration and the largely left-socialist West European governments that see climate change as an existential threat and a national security priority. In taking up the mantle of green advocacy on behalf of their paymasters, these organizations have lost all credibility as independent and objective advisors for their member countries.

The climate-industrial complex fears the prospect of the Trump administration’s pullout of the Paris Agreement for the second time. Politico, a reliable mouthpiece for the climate establishment, expressed these fears soon after Trump’s election victory: “The world is bracing for President-elect Donald Trump to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement for the second time—only this time, he could move faster and with less restraint.” In Europe, the emergence of populist parties has been partly propelled by the widespread rejection by EU citizens of the onerous fiscal burdens imposed by green policies.

The seismic change in policy direction that a second term “drill, baby, drill” Trump administration promises for the global climate juggernaut—represented by the three leading international agencies covered here—can only be seen as hopeful as we look forward to positive developments in energy policy in 2025.

 

 

 

Scientific Societies Misstate “Climate Change”

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Wallace Manheimer provides examples of the errors needing corrections in his American Thinker article Scientific Societies Err on ‘Climate Change’.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Major scientific organizations’ statements on “climate change” and the conclusions therein form the basis of much of the scientific foundation for governmental, scientific, media, and public concerns on the use of fossil fuels. Trillions of public and private dollars are currently being spent on alternative fuels to “save the planet” from the alleged harm of increasing CO2, a gas which is vital for life on earth. If the evaluations of these societies are erroneous, these measures could impoverish much of the world, to say nothing of wasting trillions. Economic damage and social unrest are already evident in some countries, including the United States.

It is therefore imperative for all that their views be based on sound science,
and if not, these societies should change their statements.

A recent publication and podcast have examined the scientific organization’s climate statements, and have found numerous errors, errors which are easy to find by simply comparing the societies’ statements with data from such reliable sources as NOAA, NASA, and others. These societies are:

♦  American Physical Society (APS),
♦  American Meteorological Society (AMS),
♦  National Academy of Science (NAS),
♦  American Chemical Society (ACS), and
♦  American Geophysical Union (AGU).    

[Manheimer refers to paper Science Societies Climate Statements: Some Concerns]

Here is one example. The AGU states “Greater CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are also affecting the growth and nutritional value of land plants…” Numerous studies, including measurements of terrestrial plant life from space, and measurements of crop production, have shown that if anything, increasing CO2 has increased both plant life and crop production. After all, CO2 is a vital nutrient for plants, and the slight warming we have experienced, possibly in part due to the increased CO2, has increased the growing seasons in the temperate latitudes.

As another example, the ACS statement asserts: “Extreme weather and related events, such as floods, droughts… are increasing in frequency and intensity, threatening Americans’ physical, social, and economic well-being.”. The frequency and intensity of floods and droughts is measured by what is called NOAA’s Palmer drought index and this index is displayed as a graph vs of index versus year. It shows clearly, that in the United States the worst sustained droughts in the U.S. were in the 1930s and 1950s, and the worst sustained floods were in the 1970s through the 1990s.

Tens of thousands of scientists, including over 10,000 with Ph.Ds., have critically examined the evidence, and have concluded that a CO2-induced climate crisis is extremely unlikely. They have willingly and publicly asserted this, by adding their names to document such as, the Oregon petition, Clintel Climate Petition , and the CO2 Coalition. Among other things, the societies should not ignore these, professional conclusions of many of their members.

Accordingly, and with humility, I suggest that these societies do the following:

  1.  Replace their climate statements with ones that say there is most likely an effect humans have on the changing climate, but its importance for humanity is uncertain and it is still being debated.
  2.   Eliminate statements that are demonstrably incorrect, as shown by comparison with easily available and reliable data.
  3. Acknowledge in their statements that fossil fuels cannot be replaced in the next several decades without greatly endangering our civilization.
  4. Acknowledge in their statements that CO2 has obvious obvious benefit for human existence, as well as potential risks.

By changing their statements to ones that are more moderate and scientifically correct, these societies will not only be helping the professions they serve, but more important, will ultimately be aiding humanity. On the other hand, if they keep their statements as they are, they will remain on the wrong side of history, and posterity will not look kindly on them. And posterity may be arriving sooner than they think. With a Republican Congress and President Trump referring to the “green new scam,” these society presidents may find themselves hauled before Congress to receive the university president treatment.

After all, the APS statement says, “Multiple lines of evidence strongly support the finding that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have become the dominant driver of global climate warming observed since the mid-twentieth century.”

    • What will its president say when the congressman puts up a graph showing that for 30 years in the early decades of the 20th century, the warming rate was the same or greater?
    • Or when he puts up a map proving that the northern forests, 4000 years ago extended about 200 miles further north worldwide than they do today.
    • Or shows that 2000 years ago, the Romans had vineyards in England extending all the way to Hadrian’s wall, millennia before cold weather grapes had been developed.
    • Or when he shows evidence that 1000 years ago the Vikings grew barley in Greenland, something not possible today. Surely this proves that the world had many warmer periods without the help of extra CO2 in the atmosphere.

There are many such statements that Congress can quote, to very publicly humiliate these society presidents. As a committed life fellow of the APS, I hope these societies will change their statements now, before the roof collapses on them.

Background from Richard Lindzen

The above described changes in scientific culture were both the cause and effect of the growth of ‘big science,’ and the concomitant rise in importance of large organizations. However, all such organizations, whether professional societies, research laboratories, advisory bodies (such as the national academies), government departments and agencies (including NASA, NOAA, EPA, NSF, etc.), and even universities are hierarchical structures where positions and policies are determined by small executive councils or even single individuals. This greatly facilitates any conscious effort to politicize science via influence in such bodies where a handful of individuals (often not even scientists) speak on behalf of organizations that include thousands of scientists, and even enforce specific scientific positions and agendas. The temptation to politicize science is overwhelming and longstanding. Public trust in science has always been high, and political organizations have long sought to improve their own credibility by associating their goals with ‘science’ – even if this involves misrepresenting the science.

Professional societies represent a somewhat special case. Originally created to provide a means for communication within professions – organizing meetings and publishing journals – they also provided, in some instances, professional certification, and public outreach. The central offices of such societies were scattered throughout the US, and rarely located in Washington. Increasingly, however, such societies require impressive presences in Washington where they engage in interactions with the federal government. Of course, the nominal interaction involves lobbying for special advantage, but increasingly, the interaction consists in issuing policy and scientific statements on behalf of the society. Such statements, however, hardly represent independent representation of membership positions. For example, the primary spokesman for the American Meteorological Society in Washington is Anthony Socci who is neither an elected official of the AMS nor a contributor to climate science. Rather, he is a former staffer for Al Gore.

Returning to the matter of scientific organizations, we find a variety of patterns of influence. The most obvious to recognize (though frequently kept from public view), consists in prominent individuals within the environmental movement simultaneously holding and using influential positions within the scientific organization. Thus, John Firor long served as administrative director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. This position was purely administrative, and Firor did not claim any scientific credentials in the atmospheric sciences at the time I was on the staff of NCAR. However, I noticed that beginning in the 1980’s, Firor was frequently speaking on the dangers of global warming as an expert from NCAR. When Firor died last November, his obituary noted that he had also been Board Chairman at Environmental Defense– a major environmental advocacy group – from 1975-1980 [5].

One could go on at some length with such examples, but a more common form of infiltration consists in simply getting a couple of seats on the council of an organization (or on the advisory panels of government agencies). This is sufficient to veto any statements or decisions that they are opposed to. Eventually, this enables the production of statements supporting their position – if only as a quid pro quo for permitting other business to get done. Sometimes, as in the production of the 1993 report of the NAS, Policy Implications of Global Warming, the environmental activists, having largely gotten their way in the preparation of the report where they were strongly represented as ‘stake holders,’ decided, nonetheless, to issue a minority statement suggesting that the NAS report had not gone ‘far enough.’ The influence of the environmental movement has effectively made support for global warming, not only a core element of political correctness, but also a requirement for the numerous prizes and awards given to scientists. That said, when it comes to professional societies, there is often no need at all for overt infiltration since issues like global warming have become a part of both political correctness and (in the US) partisan politics, and there will usually be council members who are committed in this manner.

Source:  Climate Science: Is it Currently Designed to Answer Questions?

Comment: These bodies all claim to serve society, which as American institutions should primarily be concerned about American society.  Funded by American taxpayers and donors, they should consider first and foremost their own country’s needs.  That means stopping the fuzzy logic and blurring the truth about weather and climate.  Otherwise they must fade into irrelevance.

And they must stop promoting the interests of a few colleagues at the expense of the many ordinary citizens.

 

L.A.’s Self-induced Fires Seen From the Ground

Posted on by Ron Clutz

E.M. Smith provides a resident-level view of the California Calamity at his Chiefio blog Los Angeles Burning & Did It To Themselves.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Check The News – L.A. Is On Fire

Yes, it is a disaster. Yes, $Billions of real estate going up in flames. Yes, “Stars” Losing everything; and normies too. No, it is not due to Global Warming. This is January and seasonal cool swamps any 1.5 C change.

It looks like not just Malibu, but several places all around Los Angeles, the hills, Hollywood, and more are having major fire problems.

Houses built too close together, using flammable materials. Trees and
shrubs that are flammable too. Then the Santa Ana Winds kick in.

Fire is an absolutely normal aspect of the Southern California landscape. When the Santa Ana winds blow (down slope wind that heats up from compression and gets funneled into a narrower space, so very fast) any fire becomes a blow torch. By then, there is not much you can do. Prevention is what matters, so now we wait for the winds to die down.

One TV Video showed a multi-lane major road, about 6 lanes across by the look of it. All abandoned cars. Folks trying to flee the fire, in a traffic jam, got out of their cars and ran. Firefighters had to take a bulldozer and push the cars off the road to make a lane for firetrucks.

This is the edge of insane.

So instead of mitigating fuel loads, assuring there are enough fire trucks, fire fighters, and water storage, Gavin Newsom & the L.A. area Mayors, were busy working on how to run for POTUS, and Get Trump, and assure the Unions donated a lot of money to Democrats. Hollywood “Names” were busy complaining about Republicans and having Panic Attacks about Global Warming instead of asking if their trees were Towering Infernos waiting to happen and replacing that Shake Roof with a metal one.

Distraction leads to destruction. They all knew they lived in a fire zone. PSAs have been running about it my whole life in California (at least 65 years). They chose parties with All The Right People over Prudent Planning and preparation. They chose “self actualization” over Situational Awareness and adaptation (and hard work).   Now comes the consequences.

In Conclusion

BUT, fire awareness and risk has been true the entire life of California. Either you learn to mitigate fuel, provide for rapid and effective fire suppression, and harden you house against fire; or you burn. Has always been that way. Will be too.

Folks have known for generations how to harden, mitigate, and adapt. Have houses separated from each other by enough space that one can not start the next one on fire. Build with non-flammable materials (cinder block, concrete, stucco over wire with metal 2×4 studs, tile or metal roofs, and metal shutters to prevent IR ignition of drapes inside windows (or even fiberglass drapes). Install water sprinkler fire suppression systems. DO NOT PLANT FLAMMABLE TREES, BUSHES & GRASS around houses. Have wide firebreaks between buildings. And more.

Remaining trees and vegetation on the forest floor are more vigorous after removal of small trees for fuels reduction.

All of this has been known for 100 years.

But you get more houses built, so more money made, if you pack them 12 to an acre. Folks like the “look” of wood shake roofs, asphalt shingles are cheaper, nobody wants “stucco” anymore, but I LIKE eucalyptus! and on it goes.

Nobody wants to “damage the ecology” by taking out scrub and clearing forest liter. Paying for and planning large water sources, big pipes & pumps, and having all necessary equipment on standby for a decade (or two) “for that day” just seems wasteful; until you need it.

So call me hard-hearted. I grew up in Fire Country. I’ve fought grass fires and as a temporary Forest Fire Fighter climbed up and down hills with a Pulaski (axe hoe combo) on my shoulder, sleeping in a shredded newspaper stuffed sleeping bag for a weekend, working a fire. The home I grew up in had a metal roof. My present home has cinder block walls with stucco and faux brick over it. When this roof wears out in a few years, the replacement will be metal. I have hoses and nozzles ready to put out any sparks that blow in (old habits die hard…) Folks either prepare for fire, or they accept the consequences.

A feller buncher removing small trees that act as fuel ladders and transmit fire into the forest canopy.

So when the inevitable bleating and braying about Global Warming Oh Noes! and “More Fires!” starts: Just ask if they know how many of the homes had metal roofs & shutters and stucco over cinder block walls? How many homes had a 20 foot fire break of non-flammable area around them?

And answers came there none.

Democrats: You own this one 100% since you own ALL of California Government. You made all the building codes, water systems, fire departments, roads & infrastructure. Planned all of it. Permitted the “rack ’em, pack ’em & stack ’em” building permits. Made money off cheaper wood & asphalt shingle construction. Now you will reap the results.

Wyoming: Make Carbon Dioxide Great Again–No Net Zero

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A bill is progressing through the Wyoming State Legislature, as described by the author in her op-ed Rethinking Carbon Dioxide – Wyoming’s Bold Move.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Torrington, WY (State Senator Cheri Steinmetz) January 7th, 2025 — The people of Wyoming have always believed in the value of questioning conventional wisdom, looking at the bigger picture and finding solutions that are possible and actually work. That’s the purpose of the bill titled “Make Carbon Dioxide Great Again”. This legislation is not about denying science, it is about applying science, thoroughly reevaluating the ‘climate change’ scientific assumptions and advocating for policies grounded in practicality, reality, and achievability – common sense.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is vital to life on Earth.

Without it, plants could not grow, and without plants, no life would survive. Scientists and farmers alike recognize that higher CO2 levels improve agricultural productivity. Plants thrive with more CO2 – they grow faster, use water more efficiently, and are more resilient to drought. NASA’s own research shows that rising CO2 has contributed to a global “greening” effect, expanding vegetation and helping ecosystems flourish. CO2 is plant food!

Yet, despite its essential role in sustaining life,
CO2 has been demonized as a pollutant.

But what impact are human driven CO2 emissions actually capable of? We are contributing a very small part of the natural carbon cycle. Current CO2 levels are among the lowest Earth has seen over its long history. There were times in the past when ecosystems flourished under much higher CO2 concentrations. Instead of vilifying this essential gas, we should be acknowledging its role in our ecosystems and industries and protect the benefits it has in our lives.

Wyoming is uniquely positioned to lead this conversation.

Our state is vital to energy production, agriculture and food industries, transportation and energy reliability and stability. We understand the real-world importance of CO2. And we understand the benefits of CO2 used directly. Our industries already use it to enhance oil recovery, making energy production more efficient. This technology exemplifies what we are capable of when we treat CO2 as a resource rather than a liability.

The bill Make Carbon Dioxide Great Again shifts how we think about CO2.

It proposes that we stop treating the essential gas as a pollutant or contaminant. It requires a clear-eyed look at how policies aimed at eliminating CO2 emissions, such as decarbonizing the West, making Wyoming carbon negative or popular “net-zero” mandates. They may sound good on paper but often come with high economic costs and questionable environmental benefits, and clearly negative effects on our people and our industries.

Wyoming must refuse to jeopardize our economy and energy security
for initiatives that will yield – at best – questionable results.

Critics of “net-zero” strategies have highlighted the risks of pursuing policy goals without fully considering their consequences. These frequently require massive investments, disruption of reliable energy systems, and the forced undue burdens on families and businesses. Instead, Wyoming advocates for a balanced approach – one that evaluates the risks and possible rewards of any CO2 management plans that will safeguard our economic stability and way of life.

This approach challenges the status quo, and that is precisely the point. Now is the time to rethink how we talk about CO2 and climate change. This bill is not about ignoring environmental concerns; it is about addressing them with clear-eyed pragmatism and truth.

Wyoming is taking a bold step forward to lead a balanced, science-based dialogue. We all stand to benefit from this. Our energy sector, agriculture, transportation and all other industries, and even the broader environment, will gain when we use CO2 wisely.

This conversation is just beginning and must spark
a national debate about the fundamental role of CO2.

It is a debate we need to have – not just in Wyoming, with our own Governor and citizens – but across the nation and with all the organizations leading the charge to “net zero.” Let us challenge the assumptions, ask the hard questions, and make sure our policies truly serve the people, industry and the environment. After all, that is the Wyoming way.

Text of Wyoming Bill     SF0092  Make carbon dioxide great again-no net zero.

AN   ACT   relating to   environmental quality;   providing legislative findings;
specifying that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and is a beneficial substance;
providing policy statements of the state associated with carbon dioxide;
repealing low-carbon energy standard requirements; repealing conflicting provisions;
making conforming amendments;  specifying applicability;
requiring reimbursement to utility customers as specified;
requiring rulemaking; and providing for an effective date.

Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:

Section 1.    W.S. 35-11-215 is created to read:

1             SF0092

35-11-215.     Carbon dioxide;   beneficial treatment; state policy.

(a)   The legislature finds that:

  (i)    Carbon dioxide is  a foundational nutrient necessary for all life on earth. Plants need carbon dioxide along with sunlight, water and nutrients to prosper. The more carbon dioxide available for this, the better life can  flourish;

  (ii)    The carbon cycle, where carbon dioxide is reused and transferred between the atmosphere and organisms on earth, is a biological necessity for life on earth;

  (iii)    Agricultural production worldwide is outpacing population growth and breaking production records primarily due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide;

  (iv)    More carbon dioxide allows plants to better resist drought by using water more efficiently;

  (v)     The national aeronautics and space administration has confirmed that global vegetation is increasing from the near-polar regions to the equator. The largest contributor to this greening of  the earth is increasing carbon dioxide;

  (vi)     Carbon dioxide levels are currently at approximately four hundred twenty (420) parts per million, which is  at near-historically low concentrations.   The current carbon dioxide levels are one-sixth (1/6) of the average of  two thousand six hundred  (2,600)  parts per million over geologic time;

  (vii)     It is estimated that carbon dioxide levels  need to exceed one hundred fifty (150) parts per million to ensure the survival of plant life on earth;

  (viii)     The earth needs carbon dioxide to support  life and to  increase plant yields,  both of     which will contribute to  the health and prosperity of  all Wyoming citizens.

   (b)     It is the policy of the state of Wyoming that:

(i)       Carbon dioxide is a foundational nutrient necessary for life on earth;

(ii)       Carbon dioxide shall not be designated or treated as a pollutant or contaminant;

(iii)       The state of Wyoming shall not pursue any targets or measures that support the reduction or elimination of  carbon dioxide,  including any  “net-zero”  targets.

          Section 2.        W.S. 37-1-101(a)(intro) and 37-2-134(a)(i)  and (iv) are amended to read:

37-1-101.       Definitions.

(a)   As used in chapters 1, 2, 3, 12, and 17 and 18 of  this title:

37-2-134.       Electric generation facility closures; presumption; commission review

(a)    As used in this section:

(i)     “Dispatchable” means as defined in W.S. 37-18-101(a)(ii) a source of electricity that is available for use on demand and that can be dispatched upon request of a power grid operator or that can have its power output adjusted, according to  market needs and includes dispatchability;

(iv)    “Reliable” means as  defined in W.S. 37-18-101(a)(iv) generated electricity that is not subject to intermittent availability.

        Section    3.    W.S.    37-1-101(a)(vi)(N), 37-18-101 and  37-18-102 are repealed.

Section    4.   Not later than sixty (60) days after the effective date of this act each public utility that recovered rates from customers under W.S. 37-18-102(c)(i) or (iii),  as repealed by section 3 of this act, shall refund those rates to customers who paid them, provided that the utility shall not be  required to refund rates recovered under W.S. 37-18-102(c)(i) and (iii) that the utility had expended for carbon capture, utilization and storage technology before the effective date of this act. Refunds required under this section shall be in a form and manner specified by the public service commission

Section    5.  The public service commission shall promulgate all rules necessary to implement this act.

Section    6.  This act is effective immediately upon completion of all acts necessary for a bill to become law as provided by Article 4, Section 8 of the Wyoming Constitution.

 (END)

US Supremes Hear Climate Lawfare Case to Stop Oil Railway

Posted on by Ron Clutz

IER reports the news from December in article The Supreme Court Takes on a Case Involving the National Environmental Policy Act.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Key Takeaways

1  The Supreme Court has heard a major NEPA case that could affect investment in energy and other infrastructure projects in America.

2  Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado will decide whether permit applicants must anticipate far-flung speculative impacts over which federal agencies have no control.

3  The case involves an 88-mile railway accessing oil production in the Uinta Basin in Utah, allowing expansion of domestic oil production as well as access to essential minerals in the region.

4  Green advocates sued the Surface Transportation Board because it approved without considering alleged but inestimable impacts far from the project.

5  Lower courts have sided with the Greens, who oppose mineral and energy development.

6  SCOTUS is expected to clarify the burdens projects must face to comply with NEPA, which has become a tool of delay and denial by those opposing projects of all kinds in the United States.

7 Congress is also looking at NEPA streamlining as the act has become an impediment to rational development in the United States.
The Supreme Court recently heard a major case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, that will affect the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The case concerns the permitting of a proposed Utah railway that would ship oil from the Uinta Basin, potentially quadrupling its oil production. The 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway would connect the oil fields of northeastern Utah to the national rail network running alongside 100 or so miles of the Colorado River to reach oil refineries on the Gulf Coast.  According to The Hill,  at issue is whether and when upstream and downstream environmental impacts should be considered as part of federal environmental reviews. The company behind the railway and a group of Utah counties appealed a lower court decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that those indirect impacts are beyond the scope of the federal reviews.

Background

The case concerns a rail line to support oil development and mineral mining. In 2021, the federal Surface Transportation Board (STB) issued a 3,600-page environmental impact statement to comply with NEPA and approved the rail line. The NEPA mandates that federal agencies assess the environmental effects of projects within their authority. Any major initiative that is managed, regulated, or authorized by the federal government must undergo a NEPA evaluation, a process that can span years and frequently exposes projects to legal challenges.

The STB analyzed the railway’s potential effects on local water resources, air quality, protected species, recreation, local economies, the Ute Indian tribe, and other factors. Environmental groups, however, sued the agency, saying that it failed to examine sufficiently how the railway might affect the risk of accidents on connecting lines hundreds of miles away and to assess emissions in “environmental justice communities” on the Gulf Coast from increased oil shipments, among other supposed shortcomings.

According to the Wall Street Journal editorial board, “a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel sided with the plaintiffs and told the STB it must consider the line’s upstream and downstream effects even if they were hard to predict and beyond the control of the agency and developers. This includes the effects of oil shipments on Gulf Coast refiners and their contributions to climate change.” The appeals court ruling found that the federal STB violated the Endangered Species Act and the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act when it permitted the project.

Furthermore, the editorial board also explained that lower court judges—those on the D.C. and Ninth Circuits—ignored the Supreme Court’s past rulings and imposed arbitrary permitting requirements with no limiting principle. The STB lacks authority over Gulf Coast refiners and cannot prevent climate change.

Court Rulings Regarding NEPA

The Supreme Court has heard other related cases and held that agencies need not consider indirect and unpredictable impact, most recently in a 2004 case, Department of Transportation v. Public Citizen. In that case, the Supreme Court held that agencies need only analyze environmental impact with “a reasonably close causal relationship” over which they have “statutory authority” and which they can prevent.

In 2020, the Supreme Court green-lit approval for permits for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline after nearly seven years of litigation, but the pipeline was scrapped due to legal delays that raised project costs significantly. It takes an average of 4.2 years to litigate a NEPA challenge, which adds to the four or more years to obtain a federal permit. These delays are what frustrate investment in new projects, slowing job creation and economic expansion in the United States.

A judge struck down a Montana coal mine permit because a federal agency did not consider the climate effects of coal combustion in Asia. Additionally, a 225-mile electric transmission line in Nebraska has been stuck in permitting for 10 years because a lower court invalidated a U.S. Fish and Wildlife permit.

Conclusion

The Supreme Court is tackling a case involving the scope of a federal environmental law, NEPA, that involves a rail line to move oil. In this case, lower courts agreed with environmental groups, who are challenging the government’s permit approval of the rail line. The case is instrumental to the issue of what should be considered when determining potential environmental damages. Congress recognizes that NEPA needs reform as delays over lawsuits have killed projects and dramatically increased their costs and it continues to debate ways to make federal permitting easier and quicker. Until that reform happens, however, Supreme Court Justices need to reign in the environmental limits of NEPA so that needed projects can progress in America.

What Keeps “Energy Transition” Going? $ $ $

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Robert Gauthier answered posting on a Quora topic How could we reverse the damage done by the “green energy” global scam that brought less efficient and highly polluting energy producing projects and high energy prices? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Wind and solar power has provided politicians with an excuse to dispense favours—including taxpayer-funded subsidies and tax preferences to a supposedly “green” industry—while appearing to do something for the environment. And yet, despite more than two decades of massive subsidies, tax preferences and purchasing mandates from governments, wind and solar power still represent barely more than a rounding error of global energy production. In jurisdictions where renewables enjoyed strong but ill-considered political support, consumers and taxpayers now face much higher electricity bills and less-reliable power. And despite promises to the contrary, countries such as Germany, which have significantly increased wind and solar electricity production, have seen no meaningful reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Far from being a miracle cure-all for the shortcomings of conventional power generation, wind and solar power exaggerate the symptoms they pretend to address. Added up over the past two decades, the cumulative subsidies across the world for biofuels, wind, and solar approach about $5 trillion, all of that to supply roughly 5% of global energy.

The whole justification for the falling costs of wind generation rested on the assumption that much bigger turbines would produce more output at lower capex cost per megawatt, without the large costs of generational change. Now we have confirmation that such optimism is entirely unjustified – the whole development process has been a case of too far, too fast. Again, this was both predictable and predicted. The idea that wind turbines are immune to the factors that affect other types of power engineering was always absurd. The consequence is that both capital and operating costs for wind farms will not fall as rapidly as claimed and may not fall significantly at all. It follows that current energy policies in the West are based on foundations of sand – naïve optimism reinforced by enthusiastic lobbying divorced from engineering reality.

In the end, however, politicians cannot defy the laws of physics and economics. The promise of wind and solar power will always clash with the need for electricity that is low cost and reliable. That’s why voters routinely punish politicians who pursue flawed renewable energy policies. Rising electricity costs due to increased wind and solar power damage the economy by making businesses that consume significant volumes of electricity less competitive and by leaving less money in the pockets of consumers.

In Ontario, Canada during the run of the Green Energy Act there which attempted to replace coal and nuclear with wind and solar the upshot was a 138% increase in the price of electricity at the meter for the consumers. This led to the government that brought in this legislation to lose the next election so badly that they were no longer recognized as a party in the legislature. Naturally the government that replaced them killed the program and started refurbishing the nuclear reactor fleet there.

Unfortunately, solar and wind technologies require huge amounts of land to deliver relatively small amounts of energy, disrupting natural habitats. The real estate that wind and solar energy demand led the Nature Conservancy to issue a report last year critical of “energy sprawl,” including tens of thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines needed to carry electricity from wind and solar installations to distant cities.

Land required for wind farms to power London UK

Building a single 100-MW wind farm—never mind thousands of them—requires some 30,000 tons of iron ore and 50,000 tons of concrete, as well as 900 tons of nonrecyclable plastics for the huge blades. With solar hardware, the tonnage in cement, steel, and glass is 150% greater than for wind, for the same energy output

Take batteries. It is estimated that current battery manufacturing capabilities will need to be in the order of 500-700 times bigger than now to support an all-electric global transport system. The materials needed just to allow the UK to transition to all electric transport involve amounts of materials equal to 200% the annual global production of cobalt, 75% of lithium carbonate, 100% of neodymium and 50% of copper. Scaling by a factor of 50 for world transport, and you see what is now a showstopper. The materials demands just for batteries are beyond known reserves.

And that’s just one of the issues. Others include vast costs constituting a multiple of current energy costs; the environmental impact of mining and transporting huge amounts of materials; need for vast amounts of rare elements, far beyond known world reserves; incredibly huge amounts of material to recycle when facilities wear out; and on and on.

Spend enough time researching this stuff and you gradually realize that almost everything you read about green energy shows that at best it’s really a dark shade of brown.

DEI Days are Numbered in Ivory Towers

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Leigh Revers writes at National Post Canada Universities better get prepared for Poilievre’s anti-woke agenda.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

‘Even the dullest minds in the upper administrations of Canada’s top universities
— and trust me, they are spectacularly dull — must see the writing on the wall’

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre leaves after a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and fellow opposition leaders on Parliament Hill in early December. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

The recent spectacular and decisive presidential election victory by Donald Trump — a self-styled benevolent “dictator” swept to power with an unequivocal mandate from U.S. voters — has become what can only be described as a political tsunami for left-leaning observers.

Vast change is in the offing. The political tectonic plates have shifted, prompting shattering eruptions along a number of predictable fault lines.

One such fiery volcano is gender ideology, a demonstrable fantasy that, mercifully, will soon be banished from American institutions, its many purveyors quickly to be bankrupted by Trump’s proposed state-assisted lawsuits brought by the swelling ranks of detransitioners.

A second is education, a metaphorical marshmallow that is no longer merely the artificially-sweetened confection promised to so many young people, but has instead become more like a skewered and charred husk grilled remorselessly on the three-pronged toasting fork of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

Americans need worry no longer, however. In a recent post on X, Elon Musk shared Donald Trump’s radical vision of a reformed college education system — one that demands the eradication of all DEI and its apparatchiks, and even threatens uncompliant institutions with severe taxation or complete forfeiture of their sprawling endowments. Inevitably, we will witness brazen back-peddling by the cadre of top-tier administrators desperate to remain gainfully employed. Harvard’s board, sitting on a treasure horde of US$53.2B (C$74.8B), will doubtless respond accordingly.

How will Canadian universities survive? While plunging needles into voodoo dolls of Pierre Poilievre, the left will eschew the ‘scary’ stateside politics, make accusations of neo-fascism, and point to Canada as a progressive retreat, a haven for the many orphans of woke ideology who, even now, are threatening on their social feeds to lay siege to our border, waving their American passports.

But what is far more likely, judging from predictions by even the state-sponsored CBC which suggest with 99 per cent certainty a Conservative win in 2025, is that the Canadian government in a year’s time will follow suit. Even the dullest minds in the upper administrations of Canada’s top universities — and trust me, they are spectacularly dull — must see the writing on the wall.

Here is the unvarnished reality in Canada in higher education in 2024. Students are being ripped off. Their degrees have been continuously devalued by the twin cudgels of enrolment inflation, as ballooning cohorts are funnelled through our universities, and the softening of standards in the face of academic appeasement and growing accommodations.

You might raise an eyebrow at that last remark. Academic accommodations are a form of concessionism where, according to a recent report at Queen’s University, nearly one in four students (22 per cent) gain some kind of benefit, usually in the shape of extended time allotments for examinations, to correct for what is often a largely imagined state of mental impairment.

In short, if you get anxious, the university concedes that you deserve more time than everyone else. This hardly constitutes quality education, and it inevitably dilutes academic standards. Obsequious compassion is showered on the deserving minorities; but if you are a hard-working student with no stakes in the victimhood game, well, you just have to suck it up.

Universities have consequently become expensive pre-adulthood training grounds that now choose to deride diligence, talent, and commitment in favour of equitable practices that attempt to champion anyone choosing to identify into minorities defined by inherent characteristics — gender, race, and sexuality. Indeed, their compulsive obsession with “belonging” — cited a mere 27 times, for example, in UofT’s most recent 17-page DEI report — has all the allure of a brain hemorrhage.

It will be interesting to see how they adapt to this new, inclement climate. For instance, in my own department, there are 40 staffers who support a suite of professional graduate programs.  Based on published United Steel Workers’ pay scales and benefit rates, this costs the university — a taxpayer-funded enterprise — well in excess of $3.5M per year. For a typical program, a quarter of the allotted budget is sucked up by administrative overhead. All of the appointees would doubtless declare graduate-school exceptionalism and, in the same breath, grouse about the ever-present patriarchy. But inspection shows only 24 per cent are men, and 40 per cent are, unsurprisingly, white women.

Now, sandwiched between provincial funding cuts and a collapse in international student admissions, campuses like mine will have to muster major savings as budget holes dilate in an ever-gloomier climate. Punitive financial incentives imposed by an incoming Conservative government will doubtless see a rapid turnaround as academics and administrators alike rush to gaslight everyone claiming that woke waste — characterized so effectively by journalist Charlotte Gill in Britain — was all “unintentional.”

Pull the other one. Recent propaganda sheets such as The Bulletin of the Canadian Association of University Teachers and Academic Matters, the journal of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, which purport to represent professors like myself, are awash with racist DEI and tout a slavish fealty to obsessive and damaging social justice ideology. If you belong to the editorial team of either of these absurd political pamphlets, please drop me from your mailing list.

There is hope for students. Jordan Peterson has lately launched his academy, which, though limited to the social sciences so far, has breached the universities’ monopoly and comes at a bargain price. And the content is excellent, featuring such stellar authorities as Andrew Roberts, James Orr, John Vervaeke, Eric Kaufmann and a host of others. I’ve signed up.

Time is running out for legacy universities across Canada. I have a fancy next year we will see the same wave of comedy meltdowns that followed Trump’s re-election, just this time by an army of capitulating academics. “We didn’t mean to indoctrinate you with our untested ideology — Please give us more money.” Clink-clink. Too bad. It’s not in the cards.

Leigh Revers is associate professor with the Institute for Management and Innovation at the University of Toronto.

 

Best 2024 Review Is By Satirist Dave Barry

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Raygun of Team Australia right before she wowed the crowd with her signature move, “The Sprinkler.” Anthony Behar/Sipa USA

This was published in the Miami Herald (link in red title below) and needs no additional highlights from anyone, so is reprinted below for its many amusing observations.  Barry is a true court jester, siding with no one, and unsparingly on target describing current foibles stranger than fiction.

Dave Barry Year in Review: 2024 was an exciting year,
and by ‘exciting,’ we mean ‘stupid’

How stupid was 2024? Let’s start with the art world, which over the centuries has given humanity so many beautiful, timeless masterpieces. This year, the biggest story involving art, by far, was that a cryptocurrency businessman paid $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction for . . .
A banana. Which he ate. ”It’s much better than other bananas,” he told the press.

And that was not the stupidest thing that happened in 2024. It might not even crack the top ten. Because this was also a year when:
—The Olympics awarded medals for breakdancing.
—Fully grown adults got into fights in Target stores over Stanley brand drinking cups, which are part of the national obsession with hydration that causes many Americans to carry large-capacity beverage containers at all times, as if they’re setting off on a trek across the Sahara instead of going to Trader Joe’s.
—Despite multiple instances of property damage, injury and even death, expectant couples continued to insist on revealing the genders of their unborn children by blowing things up, instead of simply telling people.
—The number of people who identify as “influencers” continued to grow exponentially, which means that unless we find a cure, within ten years everybody on the planet will be trying to make a living by influencing everybody else.
—Hundreds of millions of Americans set all their clocks ahead in March, then set them all back in November, without having the faintest idea why. (Granted, Americans do this every year; we’re just pointing out that it’s stupid.)

But what made 2024 truly special, in terms of sustained idiocy, was that it was an election year. This meant that day after day, month after month, the average American voter was subjected to a relentless gushing spew of campaign messaging created by political professionals who—no matter what side they’re on—all share one unshakeable core belief, which is that the average American voter has the intellectual capacity of a potted fern.

It was a brutal, depressing slog, and it felt as though it would never end. In fact it may still be going on in California, a state that apparently tabulates its ballots on a defective Etch-a-Sketch. For most of us, though, the elections, and this insane year, are finally over. But before we move on to whatever (God help us) lies ahead, let’s ingest our anti-nausea medication and take one last cringing look back at the events of 2024, starting with

… JANUARY …

when the nation finds itself trapped in a 1970s slasher movie, the kind in which some teenagers — played by the major political parties—are in a creepy house, being pursued by a terrifying entity, played by a rerun of the 2020 presidential election.

The only sane thing for the teenagers to do is get the hell out of there, but instead they pause by the dark, scary-looking doorway leading down to the basement, and despite the fact that the theater audience—played by the American public—is shouting “DON’T GO DOWN THERE! JUST LEAVE THE HOUSE YOU IDIOTS!”, the teenagers decide to go down into the basement, only to find “OH GOD NOOOOOO…”

And so, thanks to our political system—under which the nominees for the most powerful office in the world are chosen by approximately 73 people in approximately four rural states while the vast majority of Americans are still taking down their Christmas decorations—we once again find ourselves facing a choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Both candidates carry baggage. Trump is wanted on criminal charges in something like 23 states and, if elected, could become the first president to govern from a secret hideout. His speeches are sounding increasingly unhinged, which is no small feat since he did not sound particularly hinged in the first place.
For his part, President Biden keeps saying words that do not appear in any known human language and gives the impression that any day now he’s going to shuffle into a state dinner wearing only a bathrobe. But not necessarily his bathrobe.

In other words, we have one candidate who lost the last election but claims he won it, and another candidate who won the last election but might not remember what year that was. America, the choice is yours!

Meanwhile the nation is facing a number of serious problems. Foremost among them is the situation on the border with Mexico, which at one time was a legally separate nation from the United States but is now basically functioning as a vestibule. This has resulted in a tense confrontation between the federal government and Texas, which is alarming because, in the words of one military analyst, “Texas has way more guns.”

In government news, the Pentagon is harshly criticized for taking more than three days to notify the White House that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III had been hospitalized. This prompts the administration to check up on the rest of the cabinet, only to discover that at least four other secretaries are missing, and the Secretary of Commerce apparently died three years ago.

Abroad, fighting continues to rage in both Ukraine and Gaza, although these conflicts are no longer getting a ton of attention in the U.S. media because of all the news being generated by Taylor Swift.

In a troubling aviation incident, an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 flying at 16,000 feet suddenly develops a refrigerator-sized hole in the fuselage when an improperly attached panel blows off, terrifying passengers who have reason to wonder whether the airline crew, instead of making a big deal about the position of everybody’s tray table, should maybe be checking to see if the plane has been correctly bolted together. As a safety precaution, the Federal Aviation Administration grounds all Max 9s and advises passengers on other Boeing aircraft to “avoid sitting near windows.” For its part, Boeing states that “at least the plane didn’t lose a really important part, like one of the whaddycallits, wings.”

Here’s a rare shot of a Boeing 737 in flight with all the parts still attached. Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren/Special to USA TODAY

Speaking of big corporations making questionable products, in

… FEBRUARY …

Apple launches the much-anticipated “Vision Pro,” a virtual-reality headset costing more than your grandfather paid (Just ask him!) for his first car. But it’s worth it, because when you put it on, thanks to a revolutionary “spatial computing” system coupled with 12 cameras and a 23-million pixel display, you look like an idiot.

Special counsel Robert Hur concludes his year-long investigation into Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents by releasing a 388-page report concluding that Biden “does not appear to have all his oars in the water.” An angry Biden immediately holds a press conference, during which he heatedly denies Hur’s assertion and (this really happened) refers to Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the “president of Mexico.”

In other White House news, CNN, after reviewing documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, reports that the Biden family’s German shepherd, Commander, bit Secret Service personnel in at least 24 incidents, eclipsing the record previously held by Dick Cheney.

Moments after this picture was taken, the photographer was eaten by Commander, the Official White House Pet. Sipa USA

Meanwhile Donald Trump, who is appearing in court more often than Perry Mason, is found guilty by a New York civil judge on charges of financial fraud, aiding and abetting, aggravated contempt, disorderly obstruction, second-degree vagrancy and loitering with intent to conspire. The judge fines Trump nearly half a billion dollars and bans him for the next three years from riding in any motorcade more than six cars long. Two days later a defiant Trump attends an event called “Sneaker Con,” where (this also really happened) he unveils a line of footwear, including the gold-colored Never Surrender High Top Sneaker (Actual Marketing Slogan: “your rally cry in shoe form”).

In a highly controversial decision, the Alabama Supreme Court rules that frozen embryos are, for legal purposes, children, and therefore must immediately be thawed out and provided with iPhones.

Tucker Carlson conducts a two-hour interview with Vladimir Putin, offering westerners a rare opportunity to find out what the Russian leader really thinks. It turns out he thinks Tucker Carlson is a useful idiot.

In a Super Bowl for the ages, two teams compete against each other under the watchful gaze of Taylor Swift. Speaking of spectacles, in

… MARCH …

President Biden, seeking to dispel persistent rumors that he is an elderly man, delivers a State of the Union Address consisting almost entirely of shouting. This performance does not significantly improve his poll numbers, but it’s a big hit with members of the Washington press corps, several hundred of whom decide, independently, to describe the speech as “fiery.”

In their response, the Republicans, always looking for new ways to demonstrate their incompetence, elect to have Alabama Sen. Katie Britt deliver a disturbingly melodramatic talk from (Why not?) her kitchen, where she gives the impression that she has just ingested a wide range of pharmaceuticals, and nobody, least of all Sen. Britt, knows which one is going to kick in next.

Yet another federal budget crisis is averted at the last minute when Congress passes a $1.2 trillion spending bill, which will enable the government to keep spending insanely more money than it takes in. The U.S. debt is now growing at the rate of a trillion dollars every 100 days, but fortunately this is not a problem because it will be taken care of by future generations. “No problem! Just put it on our tab!” is the view of future generations, and that is why we love them.

In other high-finance news, Donald Trump’s lawyers tell a New York court that he cannot raise the nearly half-billion dollars he needs for an appeal bond, having been turned down by more than 30 bond companies and an individual known as Anthony “Tony Three Nostrils” Avocado. Trump gets a break when an appeals court lowers the amount to $175 million, which Trump says he definitely has, although he left it in his other pants.

In a possibly related development, Trump announces that he is selling—we are not making this up—“God Bless the USA” Bibles for $59.95 a pop. “It’s my favorite book,” he states, moments before being struck by lightning. No, that did not happen and you are a bad person for even fantasizing about it.

Donald Trump says this is his favorite book, despite the fact that he didn’t write it. GREG LOVETT/THE PALM BEACH POST / USA TODAY NETWORK

In aviation news, a Boeing plane flying from Australia to New Zealand suddenly goes into a nosedive, injuring 50 people. Another Boeing plane, taking off from the San Francisco airport, loses a piece of landing gear. A Boeing spokesperson says that the company, after conducting an in-depth review, has tentatively identified the root cause of the recent problems.

“We think it’s gravity,” said the spokesperson. “It seems to be getting worse.” As a safety precaution, Boeing is advising pilots to avoid taking off, and simply taxi the planes from city to city, which the spokesperson says “may result in delays, especially to overseas destinations.” Speaking of exciting things happening in the sky, in

… APRIL …

the nation is enthralled by a total eclipse, a rare celestial occurrence in which the earth, sun and moon align in such a way as to cause a large number of people to deliberately travel to Indianapolis. Huge crowds in the path of the totality watch excitedly as the sky gradually turns completely dark—a spectacular sight that most people will never witness again in their lifetimes, unless they’re still around at sunset.

In other natural phenomena, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake with an epicenter in central New Jersey rattles the northeast. New York City is completely paralyzed, although not because of the earthquake; it’s always completely paralyzed. But for a few seconds there is slightly less honking.

New York remains in the news with the onset of the single most exciting thing ever to happen to CNN: yet another trial of Donald Trump. In this one he’s charged with falsifying business records as part of a scheme to guarantee that every single human being on the planet, including members of primitive tribes in the Amazon jungle, would be aware that Trump had a one-night stand with porn star Stormy Daniels. At least that’s how it worked out.

True Fact: The first witness called by the prosecution is a man named “David Pecker.”

Trump was in court more often than Perry Mason. Jeenah Moon/Pool via USA TODAY NETWORK

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a contender to be Trump’s running mate, bolsters her case with a new book in which she reveals— apparently on the advice of the same public-relations firm used by Boeing—that she once shot and killed her family dog, Cricket. Many people are appalled by this revelation, although Noem’s supporters note that she would be a handy person to have around the White House if Commander ever comes back.

Speaking of commanders: President Biden, campaigning in Pennsylvania, suggests—twice—that his uncle was eaten by cannibals after his plane went down off the New Guinea coast during World War II. The prime minister of Papua New Guinea objects to the president’s cannibal story on the nitpicky grounds that it is not true. Nevertheless the president seems to sincerely believe that it happened, and it was HIS uncle, dammit.

As the tragic situation in Gaza worsens, American college students on a growing number of campuses engage in protests and other dramatic actions intended to draw attention to the single most important issue facing the world: the feelings of American college students. Speaking of drama, in

… MAY …

Stormy Daniels tells a New York jury in explicit detail about her encounter with Donald Trump during a 2006 celebrity golf tournament, testifying that when she came out of the bathroom in Trump’s hotel suite, he was waiting for her wearing only a T-shirt and boxer shorts, and before she could stop him he proceeded—without wearing a condom—to falsify business records.

True Trivia Fact: Trump finished 62nd in that celebrity tournament. The golfer who finished 43rd was Dan Quayle.

On weekends, when he’s not in court, Trump continues to campaign for president. While discussing immigration policy at a rally in New Jersey, he makes the following statement, printed here verbatim: ”Silence of the Lambs. Has anyone ever seen ‘The Silence of the Lambs’? The late, great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man. He often times would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? ‘Excuse me. I’m about to have a friend for dinner,’ as this poor doctor walked by. ‘I’m about to have a friend for dinner.’ But Hannibal Lecter. Congratulations. The late, great Hannibal Lecter.”

This statement raises a number of questions, including:
1.What?
2. Seriously, what?
3. Is it possible that it was actually Hannibal Lecter who ate Joe Biden’s uncle?

Speaking of Joe Biden, his poll numbers continue to be bad as voters express their unhappiness about the economy, especially inflation. This is very frustrating for White House spokespersons, who are constantly pointing out that inflation is no longer a problem on whatever planet it is that White House spokespersons live on. Unfortunately it’s still a problem here on Earth, where prices are significantly higher for basic needs such as food, gas, housing and tickets to the Met Gala, which cost only $50,000 last year but jumped to $75,000 this year, leaving many attendees so broke that they are forced to attend wearing what appear to be Halloween costumes.

In other presidential news, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., seeking to set himself apart from the two flawed major-party candidates and offer voters a rational alternative, tells the New York Times that doctors found a dead worm in his brain.

RFK Jr. could become the first cabinet member with a dead worm in his brain. Al Diaz adiaz@miamiherald.com

Meanwhile in a spectacular, much-anticipated natural phenomenon, trillions of cicadas emerge from the ground, watch 15 minutes of cable TV news, and elect to die.

As the month draws to a close, Trump is found guilty on all 34 felony counts of whatever it is that he was charged with. The convictions deal a fatal blow to his candidacy.

Ha ha! We are of course joking. The convictions, like all the other legal actions against Trump, are a massive boost for his candidacy, energizing his supporters and generating tens of millions of dollars in donations, an outcome that could have been predicted by anybody with a rudimentary understanding of Trump’s appeal, although it apparently did not occur to the geniuses behind this particular legal strategy. Speaking of strategies that do not work out as planned, in

… JUNE …

the Biden re-election campaign struggles to change the public perception—largely created by videos showing the president looking lost and confused—that the president is sometimes lost and confused. Democrats insist that these videos are “cheap fakes,” and that in fact Biden is sharp as a tack, but unfortunately the public never sees this because he only exhibits this sharpness when there are no cameras around to capture it, kind of like Bigfoot.

So there’s a lot on the line when Biden and Trump square off in a much-anticipated prime-time debate, which was proposed by the Biden campaign, apparently on the advice of the Boeing Corp.

The debate went smoothly for Joe Biden until it started. Jack Gruber / USA TODAY NETWORK

It’s obvious from the start of the debate that the president is struggling. He has trouble finishing, or even starting, his sentences; he spends much of the debate staring vacantly into the distance like a man who’s trying to remember where he put the remote control, unaware of the fact that he is holding it. In short, it’s a very bad night for Biden.

Q.How bad is it? A. It’s so bad that, by comparison, Donald Trump seems, at times, to be almost lucid.

Actually, it’s worse than that. It’s so bad that even professional journalists can see how bad it is. In fact suddenly everybody in Washington is acutely aware of the president’s decline, which previously had been apparent to only the entire rest of the world population. And so as we move into

… JULY …

the Democrats are in a state of panic. Behind the scenes, party leaders desperately want to get Biden off the ticket, but he repeatedly insists that he’s going to be the candidate. This leads to an awkward national conversation:
BIDEN: I’m staying in the race.
PARTY LEADERS: You have our full support, Mr. President! Whatever you decide!
BIDEN: OK, as I said, I’m staying in the race.
PARTY LEADERS: It’s your call, sir! Run, or don’t run! It’s totally up to you!
BIDEN: Again, I’m definitely running.
PARTY LEADERS: Whether you stay in or drop out, we fully support either choice! Including dropping out!
BIDEN: I SAID I’M RUNNING DAMMIT.
PARTY LEADERS: We await your decision, sir!
And so on.

Just when it appears that the presidential race cannot get any more insane, Trump goes to Butler, Pa., to hold a campaign rally, for which the security has apparently been outsourced to the Boeing Corp. Trump is shot in the ear by a man who is somehow able to climb, unimpeded, with a rifle, onto the roof of a building that not only is within range of the speaker’s platform, but also has three police snipers stationed inside it. Really.

Other than that, it was an uneventful rally. Evan Vucci AP

The attempted assassination shocks the nation but also bolsters Trump’s popularity. He has a commanding lead in the polls as, a few days later, he accepts the presidential nomination at the Republican convention (Theme: “TRUMP!”) with a triumphant speech lasting slightly longer than veterinary school.

The Democrats are now in utter despair. Biden continues to insist that he’s running; the party has no choice but to renominate him and face almost-certain defeat in November.

Then, in a sudden reversal, Biden announces that he’s quitting the race after reassessing the situation and waking up next to the severed head of a thoroughbred racehorse. Party leaders lavishly praise Biden for saving democracy, then decide, via what is undoubtedly a democratic process, to replace him with Kamala Harris.

Other than that, it’s a quiet month in politics.

In other news, a massive worldwide Internet disruption paralyzes global air travel, along with banks, hotels, hospitals and other industries, when Arnold A. Frinkledorp, an 87-year-old retiree who is attempting to send an email to his sister from his AOL account, accidentally presses the ALT, backslash, left arrow, F3, ampersand and right parenthesis keys simultaneously—which apparently nobody has ever done before—thereby triggering a Windows glitch that causes more than 8.5 million computers to crash. The disruption winds up costing businesses an estimated $5 billion, although on the plus side, Mr. Frinkledorp’s email—a meme of a cat wearing sunglasses—is successfully delivered to his sister, who accidentally deletes it.

As the Olympic Games get under way in Paris, tens of millions of viewers tune in to NBC to watch three action-packed weeks of Snoop Dogg reacting to French things. The Games take full advantage of the city’s scenic venues, including the Seine River, which is used for the swimming leg of the triathlon race after health authorities assure competitors that intensive cleanup efforts have removed “the vast majority” of the turds. Speaking of competition, in

… AUGUST …

the race for the presidency kicks into high gear as fired-up Democrats hold their convention in Chicago. The first-day highlight is a grateful and heartfelt farewell to President Biden, who speaks in the prestigious 2:30 a.m. timeslot and is never heard from again. The focus then shifts to the nomination of Kamala Harris, who is running on a platform of joy, and being joyful, and a general vibe of joyfulness, as well as a set of policies to be specified later that will take America in a new, completely different direction, in stark contrast to the policies of whoever is running the country now.

The convention gives Harris an immediate boost in the polls, and suddenly Trump faces a serious challenge, to which he responds, during a two-hour speech to a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.: “I say that I’m much better looking than her. Much better. Much better. I’m a better-looking person than Kamala.” Fox News confirms this.

The Democratic convention was a joyful time of joyous joyfulness. Josh Morgan, Josh Morgan / USA TODAY NETWORK

Meanwhile the two vice-presidential candidates, Tim Walz and J.D. Vance, engage in a spirited exchange on the issues, reminiscent of the Lincoln-Douglas debates:

WALZ: You’re weird.
VANCE: I’M not weird. YOU’RE weird.
WALZ: No, YOU’RE weird.
VANCE: No YOU’RE weird.
WALZ: No YOU’RE…

Speaking of weird: Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., following up on the revelation that he has a dead worm in his brain, reveals that he once picked up a roadkill bear, which he later—we’ve all done it—left under a bicycle in Central Park as a prank. Three weeks later Kennedy suspends his campaign and urges his followers to vote for Trump, assuming they are able to chew through their restraints.

Two astronauts are stuck aboard the International Space Station when the Starliner spacecraft that was supposed to return them to Earth develops mechanical problems. You will never in a million years guess the name of the company that built this spacecraft. Meanwhile down here on Earth things are also not going so great as we move into

… SEPTEMBER …

when suddenly, with no advance warning, the biggest issue in the presidential election is the question of whether Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s pets. They are not, but this fact does not prevent Trump from raising the issue in a televised debate with Harris, during which Trump gives the impression that his debate prep consisted entirely of getting his hair dyed a slightly more believable color. ”In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” he states, “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

For her part, Harris repeatedly stresses the message that she is a regular middle-class person from the middle class who totally relates to the problems faced by middle-class people like herself, and she definitely intends to fix these problems once she is elected to high government office.

Harris is widely considered to be the winner of the debate, on top of which she is endorsed by Taylor Swift, which is a big deal because Swift has more than 280 million Instagram followers and 53 votes in the Electoral College.

Both Taylor Swift and her cat endorsed Kamala Harris. Screenshot from Instagram

A week after the debate, police capture a would-be assassin who was spotted with a rifle on a golf course where Trump was playing. There was a time in America when this event—the second serious assassination attempt on a major presidential candidate in two months—would be considered a big story, but in the hellscape that is 2024 politics it dominates the headlines for considerably less time than the mythical pet-eating Haitians.

As the election draws closer emotions are running high. It’s also an increasingly tense time in the Middle East, where Israel and Iran appear to be on the verge of all-out war.

But the good news is that at least the hurricane season has been relatively peacef… OK, scratch that. In late September, Hurricane Helene causes horrendous devastation in six southeastern states, and then in

… OCTOBER …

Hurricane Milton ravages Florida. It’s a brutally difficult time for millions of Americans, but the good news is that at least nobody tries to politicize the disasters or use them to spread idiotic conspiracy theories about sinister forces controlling the weath… OK, scratch that also.

In presidential election news, Trump makes a campaign appearance at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, during which he wears an apron and serves some people at the drive-thru window. This is the kind of hokey photo-op stunt that politicians have been doing forever, so you’d think this would be no big deal, right?

Wrong. It is a huge deal. Thanks to Trump’s uncanny ability—it is his superpower—to drastically reduce the functional IQ of professional journalists, this event dominates the national political coverage for days. Newsweek runs a story headlined “Was Donald Trump’s McDonald’s Shift ‘Staged’?” The New York Times runs six—that’s right, six—stories about it, including one asserting that, among other infractions, Trump “shoveled a scoopful of fries the wrong way” and “committed what appeared to be a number of health code violations.”

Professional journalists were able to prove, using journalism, that this was a photo op. Pool TNS

Somehow Trump survives all this journalism. He continues to crisscross the nation promising tax breaks for pretty much every category of U.S. resident including domestic animals, and giving increasingly improvisational speeches during which every thought fragment that seeps into his brain spurts instantly from his mouth without any kind of review. For example: Speaking to a rally in Latrobe, Pa., Trump informs the crowd that their beloved hometown hero, the late Arnold Palmer, had an unusually large putter. (We don’t know whether the New York Times assigned a team of reporters to investigate this claim, but we would not rule it out.)

In another suave outreach move, the Trump campaign, ever sensitive to accusations of racism, holds a rally in Madison Square Garden featuring a comedian who jokes that—prepare for hilarity—Puerto Rico is garbage.

On the Democratic side, the Kamala Harris campaign, which has spent more than a billion dollars but is still struggling to clearly define the candidate’s vision for the presidency, settles on an upbeat closing message: “Whoever She Is, She’s Not Donald Trump.” At exactly the same time Harris is making her big final pitch to voters, Joe Biden, who is still technically the president, somehow gains access to Zoom and lends the Harris campaign a helping hand by declaring, in response to the Trump-rally Puerto Rico joke, that roughly half of the U.S. electorate is garbage. Thanks, Joe!

Meanwhile, in an issue that neither party talks about because fixing it would require political courage, the national debt goes over $35 trillion, moving the nation still closer to the inevitable financial catastrophe that will leave future generations completely screwed. Fortunately, as we have noted, future generations are fine with this. “Don’t worry about it!” they would say, if they could speak to our current political leadership. “We know you’re busy leading!”

On a happier note, for the 14th consecutive year the World Series is won by a team other than the Yankees.

In space, a large communications satellite unexpectedly explodes, creating debris that threatens other satellites. In the spirit of mercy we will not name the company that made the defective satellite, other than to say it rhymes with “blowing.” Speaking of unexpected, in

… NOVEMBER …

the voters finally go to the polls for the most important American election since at least the dawn of time. All the expert political analysts and professional pollsters using scientific methodology agree that the race is extremely tight, a tossup, a dead heat, especially in the crucial battleground states. It’s too close to call! The experts are certain of this.

On election night, the TV networks are teeming with political commentators prepared to analyze and dissect and crunch the numbers far into the night as the nation settles in for the long, grueling process of determining the winner, a process that everyone agrees could go on for days, possibly even weeks, because of the extreme razor-thin closeness of the…

Never mind. In roughly the same amount of time it takes to air a Geico commercial, the networks determine that Donald Trump has decisively won the election, including all of the so-called battleground states and four Canadian provinces. It’s a stunning result and a massive failure by the expert political analysts, who humbly admit that they had no idea what was happening, and promise that from now on they will be more aware of their limitations.

We are of course joking. In a matter of seconds these experts pivot from being spectacularly clueless about what was going to happen in the election to confidently explaining what happened in the election.

One theory is that it was not a great idea for the Democrats to insist that President Biden was fine until it was embarrassingly obvious that he was not, then replace him, via a secret process, with a candidate who was not great at talking and did not run in a single primary and who previously advocated positions that many Americans were not crazy about, which is why they voted, sometimes reluctantly, for Donald Trump.

One branch of the Democratic party accepts this theory and begins the painful but necessary process of self-examination. Another branch prefers to believe that the party is fine and the real problem is that most Americans are sexist racist pro-fascist morons, which may not be a winning message for the Democrats going forward, but it does enable this branch to feel better about itself.

For his part, Donald Trump has no doubt whatsoever that the American people have given him a mandate to deport anywhere up to 60 percent of the U.S. population and—in his words—“turn this great nation around by appointing wildly unqualified individuals to the cabinet.”

OK, he didn’t actually say that, but he did nominate Matt Gaetz to be attorney general, which is like nominating Jeffrey Dahmer to be surgeon general. Gaetz is soon forced to withdraw his name from consideration after Trump is informed that the U.S. Senate, for all its shortcomings, is not completely insane.

Another controversial Trump nomination, this one for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, is Robert F. “Roadkill” Kennedy Jr., who used to think Trump was basically Hitler but now thinks he’s great. Kennedy is deeply suspicious of vaccines, Big Pharma, the CIA, fluoride, seed oils, WiFi, Froot Loops and chemicals in general. He also wants to make America healthy again by reducing the consumption of the overprocessed junk foods that have turned many Americans into big fat waddling tubs of lard, like… OK, like many Americans.

In environmental news, 70,000 world leaders, politicians, bureaucrats, aides, activists, consultants, celebrities, media people, caterers, chauffeurs, bodyguards, grifters, masseurs, masseuses, and private-jet pilots gather for COP29, the massive conference held every year by the United Nations to solve the pesky problem of global climate change. This year’s host nation is Azerbaijan, which, as a corrupt authoritarian state whose main source of income is selling billions of dollars worth of oil and gas, naturally wants everybody to stop using so darned much oil and gas. The conference is once again a huge success as measured in metric tons of hors d’oeuvres consumed, and everybody agrees to gather again for COP30 next year, on the off chance that global climate change is still going on.

Speaking of comically futile gestures: The Australian senate passes a law banning children under 16 from social media. This law will be enforced by adults who have to ask their children for technical support when they accidentally lock themselves out of their iPhones. Speaking of protecting children, in

… DECEMBER …

Joe Biden, who repeatedly promised that he would not pardon his son Hunter, cements his legacy as the most Joe Biden president ever by pardoning his son Hunter, thus forcing the Democratic party to change its mantra from “Nobody Is Above the Law!” to “Hey, It’s Complicated.” The wording of the pardon document is quite broad, covering “all offenses committed between 2014 and 2024, including any currently unsolved bank robberies, not that we are suggesting anything.”

The pardon outrages many Republicans who would be fine with it if Trump did it, while it’s fine with many Democrats who would be outraged if Trump did it. For that is how our system of checks and balances works.

Meanwhile Trump is acting as though he’s already the president—meeting with foreign leaders, signing treaties, vetoing legislation, authorizing drone strikes and ordering the beheading of “Peach” and “Blossom,” the two turkeys Biden pardoned for Thanksgiving.

Helping Trump with the transition is his new best billionaire friend Elon Musk, the genius tech visionary who’s going to make the federal government efficient by implementing “outside the box” measures such as:
—Having veterinarians install locator chips in all federal employees.
—Replacing both the Air Force and the Internal Revenue Service with laser-equipped orbital space robots.
—Combining the departments of Energy, Transportation, Labor, Agriculture, Interior and Justice into a single agency called “The Guv,” which will be physically located in Taiwan but accessible via an app.
—Renting Hawaii out for proms.

Trump and his new best billionaire bud envision the future. Brad Penner-Imagn Images

It’s an exciting time to be alive, as post-election America begins to discover, with varying degrees of excitement, what it voted for.

After numerous sightings of mysterious lights in the sky over New Jersey, government officials seek to calm an increasingly alarmed public. ”We’ve investigated these lights, and there’s absolutely nothing to worry about,” states Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who adds, “on an unrelated note, people should keep their children indoors.”

In other news, a horrific crime on a New York City sidewalk leads to a national conversation about the U.S. healthcare system, which reveals that a truly disturbing number of people believe the following three things:
1.The healthcare system is bad.
2.Therefore, murder is OK.
3.Especially if the murderer is cute.

Clearly, this year needs to end. Which is why we’re looking forward to New Year’s Eve—when, in a beloved tradition, thousands of revelers will gather in Times Square to say goodbye to 2024, and welcome 2025. We like to think that on that night, as the seconds tick down to zero and that giant ball starts to descend, the people gazing up at it will all be united, if only for a moment, by a common hope —a hope shared by the millions of us watching on television—specifically, the hope that the giant ball was not manufactured by the Boeing Corp.

Also, while we’re hoping, let’s hope that 2025 will be a better year. How could it be worse?
Try not to think about it.