It had to happen – and now it has.
VW – and soon, everyone else, inevitably – is under the gun over “emissions” that aren’t even pollutants.
Carbon dioxide.
This inert gas (look it up if you missed it in high school chemistry) doesn’t contribute to smog, cause acid rain, deplete the the ozone layer, irritate the lungs, or harm babies. Plants breathe it and by breathing it, produce the oxygen we need to breathe. If C02 is a “pollutant” then according to the same logic, so is water vapor (oy, don’t give them ideas).
But carbon dioxide is a “greenhouse gas” that contributes to “climate change,” the new (and pope-approved!) catch-all phrase that encompasses warmer and colder weather, neatly pathologizing both of them.
Cows produce it; we produce it and cars produce it.
VW is in the crosshairs because of this.
A couple of days ago, the company issued another apologia (here) for “understating” the “emissions” of this inert gas by its gasoline-powered (note italics) powered cars. The “affected” vehicles (about 1 million of them, so far) this time aren’t U.S. models but they aren’t diesel models.
In Europe, you see, they already treat carbon dioxide – an inert gas – as a motor vehicle exhaust subject to government regulation. This is not yet the case in the U.S., but it is only a matter of time.
As they used to say in Germany before the war – der tag kommt.
The Europeans have fully embraced the climate change tar baby – which means they’ve accepted the idea that the inert gas, carbon dioxide, is something that must be “controlled.”
And you can’t control C02 without controlling people.
That’s the beauty of it – from the perspective of those who want to “save the planet” from personal mobility via the privately owned car: Carbon dioxide emissions can’t be eliminated or even appreciably “controlled” without eliminating or severely controlling internal combustion. Because C02 is the product of normal combustion whereas the exhaust emissions heretofore considered harmful (and regulated) are the byproducts of imperfect (incomplete) combustion.
Again, note the italics.
Since the dawn of the Emissions Era – the late 1960s, when the first steps were taken to “control” what came out of the tailpipe – the object has been to make combustion more complete because it is chiefly incomplete combustion that results in the stuff that wrinkles your nose, smogs the sky and waters your eyes. Not all the gas that’s fed to the engine ends up being consumed by the engine; a certain percentage of unburned hydrocarbons (that’s the fuel) escaped into the air via the tailpipe.
For the past almost 50 years, emissions controls have sought to capture or convert these unburned hydrocarbons into harmless compounds such as – wait for it – carbon dioxide and water vapor. Which – it used to be thought – were no threat to anyone’s health, including the planet’s.
But that all changed with the advent of “climate change,” the modern (and increasingly global) snipe hunt. Carbon dioxide became the new bogeyman – which was necessary, since the old (and real) bogeyman (actually harmful emissions) had been dealt with.
The cause must go on, you see.
If pollution as it used to be understood is no longer a problem (about 95 percent of a new car’s exhaust is “clean” in terms of the heretofore accepted definition of harmful pollutants ) then new forms of pollution must be invented.
So that they can be “controlled,” of course.
Enter carbon dioxide.
Which is the perfect “pollutant” because it results from complete combustion. Grok that. Now matter how “clean” an IC engine may be, it will always “emit” C02. There is no way for it not to emit C02.
At least, not without turning the engine off.
The best one can do is make the engine really small. Because the less fuel it burns, the less C02 it creates. There is no mechanical way to reduce C02 “emissions” via say a catalytic converter or port fuel injection. It would be like trying to “control” the amount of gas you and I exhale.
We can only do that by breathing less.
Carbon dioxide is what internal combustion engines exhale – even when they are in perfect tune and even when their combustion is nearly 100 percent complete (which has yet to be achieved and may never be achieved).
If the U.S. follows the euro example and the EPA obtains the power to regulate carbon dioxide as an exhaust emission, it will mean big things.
Or rather, small things.
And more controlled things.
There will be few, if any V8s or even six cylinder engines. They will be regulated out of existence – or made very expensive, as via new C02 taxes (with current “gas guzzler” taxes serving as the role model). On account of there’s no way to reduce the C02 “emissions” of a big V8 or six. The only option is to tax them so as to reduce their number by negative economic inducements.
The other option is to make a lot of really small engines – like they do in Europe already. Little engines burn less fuel – and so emit a lesser volume of exhaust gasses. But the rub is that smaller cars are – here it comes! – less “safe.” That is, less able to comply with the M1 Abrams Tank Standards in effect in the U.S.
Which is why those really small (and very fuel-efficient) Euro cars are not available here.
It’ll be Catch-22 time.
Small cars emit less C02, but they are not “safe.” So we can’t have them – but we also can’t have “safe” cars that have bigger engines (to haul the weight that makes them “safe”) because they emit to much climate change-causing carbon dioxide.
They’ve got us coming – and going – and that’s probably just what’s wanted.
To drive us out of our cars.
VW is merely the first casualty in a war that’s about to go full hot.
Better buckle up.
EPautos.com depends on you to keep the wheels turning! The control freaks (Clovers) hate us. Goo-guhl blackballed us.
Will you help us?
Our donate button is here.
If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
EPautos stickers are free to those who sign up for a $5 or more monthly recurring donation to support EPautos, or for a one-time donation of $10 or more. (Please be sure to tell us you want a sticker – and also, provide an address, so we know where to mail the thing!)
No mention of the CO2 produced by a US aircraft carrier or F35 jet. Is Solyndra on the job yet? Somehow I think they get a pass for doing important tyrannizing. Same idea for gun control, the gubmint should lead by example.
The world’s largest consumer of fuel, the US federal government, will not curtail its operations to use less.
Remember, it’s the little people who are supposed to sacrifice and obey.
“A team of European researchers have unveiled a scientific model showing that the Earth is likely to experience a “mini ice age” from 2030 to 2040 as a result of decreased solar activity.”.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/616937/GLOBAL-COOLING-Decade-long-ice-age-predicted-as-sun-hibernates
Holy Long Johns, Batman! Time to break out the CO2 generators.
Of course this ‘computer model’ is likely to be no more accurate than the ones predicting endless global warming, before it ended almost 20 years ago.
“And you can’t control C02 without controlling people.”
This is called Technocracy (a concept from the 1930s). Regulate CO2 and you regulate energy use.
Read the book Technocracy Rising by Patrick Wood. It explains the reason they want to regulate energy. The “Carbon Tax” and “CO2 causes climate change” are based on bad science. This is politically motivated and designed to control people via control of energy usage.
Cannot hold my tongue !
Needless to say, I completely agree with this article. However I have a different take on the cause of this issue.
VW, and I drive an ’05 Passat TDI wagon, is being attacked by our financial shmendriks. CO2 and other effluents are just the tool of this attack. The same people who have run our economy in the ditch also run most of the other governmental functions, and they have fucked us up (intentionally). They will try anything to keep the financial Ponzi scheme alive including economic warfare on any other country (when that fails, as it is doing, military stuff will happen).
Every poke in the eye of Germany, France or where ever, means more product will be sold here. This means lucre for the money changers. Hence, any thing is fair game economically. How about fracking our oil reserves to screw the Russians ? Will not last, but it works momentarily.
Aside from the economic motivations involved, this hit on VW (and others) is a result of the engineered loss of control that occurred when organized religion was replaced with secularism. When people could no longer be controlled by threats of eternal damnation, something else had to be found for the Masters of the Universe to stay on top.
Being unable to save people, “Let’s save the environment”. Eschatology is the study of the end of time, and we have been threatened with that for eons.
This boils down to short term economic survival by killing VW, etc., and long term survival by controlling society and the world through threats of annihilation of the species.
Speaking of small cars, I just took delivery on a 1987 Citroen 2CV6, a Charleston. Two cylinders, 602cc, air cooled, Solex Carburetor, four speeds, wt. 1200 lbs. Could not be happier.
Hanover County, Virginia
Excellent, excellent points. The beating on VW is much more likely due to cronyism and trade control rather than actual environmental reasons.
Eric, do you ever follow Karen De Coster? She had a great little blog post a couple months ago that grabbed my attention about this. She pointed out that it probably had something to do with VW increasing investment in Russia, as well as a smackdown to Quatar over the pissing contest of cheap gas hurting US fracking. This connection seems much more likely to me than environmental motivations.
http://karendecoster.com/22405.html
The environmentalists own data states that the atmosphere contains 400 ppm of these greenhouse gases. They say that this is too much, but if you look at these huge greenhouse farms they have thousands of ppm because that’s what makes crops grow faster and more abundantly. Crops growing out on open land are STARVED for C0 2. Here’s the scary part, and you probably might even remember this from one of your old high school text books; at 150 ppm plants die and pretty much all life on the planet goes extinct.
Simple solutions: 1. defund the EPA 2. get the US out of the UN and of course we stop paying the 47% of its budget US taxpayers NOW pay. Those 2 would seriously help.
Hi Fred,
If only… .
Unfortunately, many Americans (maybe a majority) love the UN, or at least don’t hate it.
An extension of that budget allowing UN workers to continue to molest children.
Hi CP,
Sure, why not? They already molest adults with impunity. Why not start early?
Eric,
Yeah, not to mention its a racket! Well, everything these days seems that way.
CP, I’d like to add another thing about “the racket”. Who hates Germany more than the Israelis? Here is a great article by Glenn Greenwald tying Hitlery, the neocons, Netanyahu and the military corporate greed crew altogether.
It enforces my view that Israel doesn’t want to be allies to the US but would rather see the US be destroyed and take it over. Meanwhile, it will “appear” to have the same wants and needs as the US but those willing to look under the bed will see the lie of that.
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/05/leaked-emails-from-pro-clinton-group-reveal-censorship-of-staff-on-israel-aipac-pandering-warped-militarism/
Really? You think even 10% of Americans have the slightest clue as to what the UN is? I’d say less than 1% of the people understand the UN. I’d shock or outright entertain and make the 99% of ‘mercuns laugh at the thought the UN is nothing more or less than the global controllers way of keeping “civilized” country populations drained dry for their various nefarious activities. It’s just the US taxes that fund it. All the way from it’s infancy to it’s eminent power right now, the UN is nothing more than an elitist agenda to control the entire world, using the most productive wages from everywhere, esp the US. to fund it’s activities.
The United Nations was never more than an elite farce to discredit creditable people and credit itself via illegal taxes on anyone with a govt. that could collect those taxes. That, for one, would be us……US…..or in my vernacular, the butt-licking US state of Texas.
FDR supposedly once stated that nothing in politics ever happens by accident.
I really think the whole EPA attack on VW was timed to occur a couple of months before the next UN climate conference, which will be a further attempt to tax and micro regulate every aspect of our lives (of course, for our own good and that of the children).
Bend over and await insertion, folks.
Previously seen in the Socialist Republic of Berkeley, CA and NYC a few years back…
Stop signs with the Words “Driving” Stenciled below like urban street advertising…
Programming for the masses? Sock Headed Hipster Che t shirt wearing Commie Pinko tree hugger performance art? Future EPA adminstrators pulling a college prank?
Curious observation!
Its a fad that will not go away. Too many of the people participating in activism have little insight into what they are ‘fighting’ for. Look at Saul Alinsky’s stuff – he was an organizer with Borderline Personality Disorder. He used the ‘if your not with us, your against us’ approach, quite literally. He suggested people think of their opposition as “Hitler.” Thereby, he wanted to polarize the nation more than bring it together.
It has hardly been even two generations since then and people still use his ideas. Look at people who followed Farrakhan. No diplomacy, just attack. Hypocritical because the very forces they claim are evil and try to defeat – they act more cynical in approaching ‘change.’
Alinsky might well have been on Mi6, Mossad, CIA, or a more shadowy alphabet association’s payroll.
Though Alinsky is rightfully understood to have been a leftist, his legacy is more methodological than ideological. He identified a set of very specific rules that ordinary citizens could follow, and tactics that ordinary citizens could employ, as a means of gaining public power.
His motto was, “The most effective means are whatever will achieve the desired results.”
Alinsky studied criminology as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, during which time he became friendly with Al Capone and his mobsters.
Alinsky’s personality was said to be: “Charming and self-absorbed,” Alinsky would entertain friends with stories — some true, many embellished — from his mob days for decades afterward.
He was profane, outspoken, and narcissistic, always the center of attention despite his tweedy, academic look and thick, horn-rimmed glasses.”
“Alinsky was deeply influenced by the great social science insight of his times, one developed by his professors at Chicago: that the pathologies of the urban poor were not hereditary but environmental.
This idea, that people could change their lives by changing their surroundings, led him to take an obscure social science phrase—‘the community organization’–and turn it into, something controversial, important, even romantic.
(You know – the COIC – Community Organizer In Chief)
Alinsky was fascinated by John L. Lewis, the great labor leader and founder of the CIO. What if, Alinsky wondered, the same hardheaded tactics used by unions could be applied to the relationship between citizens and public officials?”
After completing his graduate work in criminology, Alinsky went on to develop what are known today as the Alinsky concepts of mass organization for power.
In the late 1930s he earned a reputation as a master organizer of the poor when he organized the “Back of the Yards” area in Chicago, an industrial and residential ethnic neighborhood on the Southwest Side of the city, so named because it is near the site of the former Union Stockyards.
This area was made famous in Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle.
In 1940 Alinsky established the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), through which he and his staff helped “organize” communities not only in Chicago but throughout the United States.
IAF remains an active entity to this day. Its national headquarters are located in Chicago, and it has affiliates in the District of Columbia, twenty-one separate states, and three foreign countries (Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom).
In the 1960s, the Black Power movement drove Alinsky and his organizing crusades out of the projects in African-American neighborhoods, which caused him to shift his focus to white communities.
For this purpose, he established the Citizens Action Program (CAP), in 1970. Alinsky was convinced that large-scale socialist transformation would require an alliance between the struggling middle class and the poor.
The key to radical social change, Alinsky thought, was to turn the wrath of America’s middle class against large corporations.
(Remember all the big money and power in America is held in these neutered and plucked creatures of the state.)
Bill Gates doesn’t have 79 billions dollars in his pocket. It’s held in corporations and institutions, which affords him far less power and leeway as far as what he can do with it.
The attack on corporations is meant to be the death blow to wealthy individuals and a man’s ability to act and conduct himself however he sees fit.
Once all the VW’s and Walmarts feathers are plucked bare, and they’re all hogtied together in unworkable conglomerates for their survival’s sake.
There won’t be anyone left to challenge the central social powers, whether they’re democrat, republican, libertarian, anarcho-capitalist, socialist, whatever, it won’t really matter.
Those things are all different phases of the same thing. Anarcho-capitalist institutions, should Mises and Koch create them. are merely freer gas phase versions of the usual authoritarian octopus monoliths.)
Anyway, in the Alinsky model, “organizing” is a euphemism for “revolution” — a wholesale revolution whose ultimate objective is the systematic acquisition of power by a purportedly oppressed segment of the population, and the radical transformation of America’s social and economic structure.
The goal is to foment enough public discontent, moral confusion, and outright chaos to spark the social upheaval that Marx, Engels, and Lenin predicted — a revolution whose foot soldiers view the status quo as fatally flawed and wholly unworthy of salvation.
Thus, the theory goes, the people will settle for nothing less than that status quo’s complete collapse — to be followed by the erection of an entirely new system upon its ruins. Toward that end, they will be apt to follow the lead of charismatic radical organizers who project an aura of confidence and vision, and who profess to clearly understand what types of societal “changes” are needed. (Trump, Carson, Rand Paul, Gary Johnson, they’re all versions of the same thing.)
As Alinsky put it: “A reformation means that the masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don’t know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless. They won’t act for change but won’t strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution.”
Problem is, EVERY system becomes, “…self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless.” The purpose of the system is to make things flow smoothly, to make sure there are no discrepancies. Read: Free thought; Degrees of Freedom (in both the mechanical sense, and the literal sense of self-determination.)
We need to implement these principles against the founders of this social monolith, which is difficult… They’ve been at it longer, and for us, it’s more a false-face. We want to be left alone to our own freedoms and devices; they want us constrained to their visions of “freedom” and “equality.” Those very principles, when forced on others, result in chaos. It’s dissolution of culture (self-defeating system.)
It’s a human problem, WRT entropy. In the microcosm, it’s the saying, “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” Gen 1 works to build a fortune; Gen 2 can manage that fortune, but doesn’t understand the effort to create it; Gen 3 grows up in the lap of luxury, and squanders it. Gen 4 starts over. We haven’t had that in some of our moneyed families because of sheer volume of wealth, I think. Rockefeller, for example, still owns so much, there’s no way to squander the wealth. Might hit a rough spot, but if you’re valued at $5-10 BILLION…? And others are starving to death in the streets? If it takes $30K/year to live at subsistence levels, and your dividends or income is in the millions? Let alone, if you’re incorporated and pay yourself a stipend of $50K, while the Foundation takes in all other moneys? You’re enjoying what John D. created almost a century ago, with the foundation paying for housing, probably food, probably education, definitely fundraisers for your Foundation, which you can then skim off should you want/need to… It might cost $500,000 to throw a benefit dinner “for the children.” But you’ll bring in $1.5 million… Repeat quarterly, you’re already wealthy… That’s enough left over to buy a Senator or two, and we’re not even looking at the remaining wealth-generating items…. And the wealth-saving items, partially mentioned – the foundation pays for “X” while Joe 6-pack pays out of his earnings for something similar to “X” – lower quality, less advantageous, etc.
Not the only thing that follows that path, either….
Found this on Facebook, hope it’s not TOO OT for us – I think it shows similar principles to how our freedoms have been eroded; how government has grown; how, eventually, all systems fail…
A German’s View on Islam – worth reading.
Hard to argue with this:
A German’s View on Islam – worth reading. This is one of the best
explanations of the Muslim terrorist situation I have ever read. His
references to past history are accurate and clear. Not long, easy to
understand, and well worth the read. The author of this email is Dr. Emanuel
Tanya, a well-known and well-respected psychiatrist. A man, whose family
was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large
industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis,
the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
‘Very few people were true Nazis,’ he said, ‘but many enjoyed the return of
German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who
just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back
and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had
lost control, and the end of the world had come.’
‘My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the
Allies destroyed my factories.’
‘We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is
a religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live
in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely
irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff meant to make us feel better, and meant
to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in
the name of Islam.’
‘The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is
the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting
wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or
tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire
continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder,
or honor-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is
the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims
and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to
become suicide bombers.’
‘The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ‘silent
majority,’ is cowed and extraneous. Communist Russia was comprised of
Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were
responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority
were irrelevant. China ‘s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese
Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.’
‘The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a
warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across
South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of
12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And
who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery? Could it not be said
that the majority of Rwandans were ‘peace loving’?
‘History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our
powers of reason, We often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:
peace-loving Muslims Have been made irrelevant by their silence.
Peace-loving Muslims will become our Enemy if they don’t speak up, because
like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the
fanatics own them, and the end of their world Will have begun.’
‘Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs,
Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many
others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was
too late.’
‘Now Islamic prayers have been introduced in Toronto and other public
schools in Ontario, and, yes, in Ottawa, too, while the Lord’s Prayer was
removed (due to being so offensive?). The Islamic way may be peaceful for
the time being in our country until the fanatics move in.’
‘In Australia, and indeed in many countries around the world, many of the
most commonly consumed food items have the halal emblem on them. Just look
at the back of some of the most popular chocolate bars, and at other food
items in your local supermarket. Food on aircraft have the halal emblem just
to appease the privileged minority who are now rapidly expanding within the
nation’s shores.’
‘In the U.K, the Muslim communities refuse to integrate and there are now
dozens of “no-go” zones within major cities across the country that the
police force dare not intrude upon. Sharia law prevails there, because the
Muslim community in those areas
Refuse to acknowledge British law.’
‘As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group
that counts – the fanatics who threaten our way of life.’
Lastly, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this
email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows
the problems to expand.
Extend yourself a bit and send this on. Let us hope that thousands
world-wide read this, think about it, and send it on before it’s too late,
and we are silenced because we were silent!!
I enjoyed reading your depiction of Alinsky. It will not surprise me if later on it is revealed he worked with a governmental organization. Few people realize how capable the government is at forming our ideas and opinions. While in college it was leaked, and later proven true, that undercover police officers were enrolled in classrooms for the purposes of monitoring our activities. Nobody wants to think we live in a “Parallax View” type of society. Yet, here we are.
Indeed, CP.
It’s not a new tactic, either. For instance, Der Fuhrer (before he became Der Fuhrer) worked for the government, as an infiltrator and spy. So also – apparently – Stalin, who worked for the Tsar’s secret police.
Eric,
I had no idea – I didn’t catch that when I watched “Adolf Hitler: The Greatest Story Never Told.” And yes, I really did watch it. That’s how impartial I try to be. Honestly, it’s hard to believe anything I was ever taught in history.
The other end of the spectrum is reading Zinn – who seemed motivated by whatever was motivating Alinsky. Its all very sketch. My Armenian and Polish friends are skeptical – nobody thinks about their suffering. Only one ethnicity seems to have a monopoly on sympathy.
We wouldn’t dare allow our Native American citizens to have the audience they do. Even though, arguably, they suffered much more.
Hi CP,
Yup.
Hitler was employed as a spy, under the command of Captain Ernst Rohm (later disposed of by Hitler).
Similarly, Stalin.
The Daily Beast is up with a post on ‘Conspiracy Theories’ that would be funny if the poster wasn’t serious.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/05/the-conspiracy-theories-animating-the-right.html
Where do they find these people? And how do they get their lies published? The Southern Poverty Law Center? Seriously? They no absolutely NO credibility with any thinking person. Most of the stuff she listed is either true or partly true, with a couple of exceptions thrown in, in a vain attempt to give herself a smidgen of credibility. My god, the far left radical zealots really believe this stuff?
“They have no absolutely NO credibility with any thinking person.”
But see, that’s just it. Very few people these days actually think.
Relying upon tiny engines to reduce emissions via fuel consumption requires tiny vehicles. Smaller engines in bigger cars tend to be as thirsty as bigger engines.
Gravity. Inertia. Friction. Physics!
“Gravity. Inertia. Friction. Physics!”
But hasn’t Congress repealed those laws?
NO…they believe that if they ignore they exist, that they will not be enforced, since they and they alone are omnipotent, omnipresent, and their high ego emissions Prius gets them a climate pass. They would be the first to buy carbon credits to offset their Nat Gas Pool Heater run in the middle of the winter….from high chieftain Al Gore of course…
They’re still trying to live down Saturn V(it can’t work it can’t work etc)
Hi Eight,
I used to think it was funny that some people didn’t believe the Apollo landings happened; that it was all a fake, with the connivance of Stanley Kubrick. But it’s no longer funny. As the years roll by and the populace becomes increasingly vacuous, it is becoming mainstream to believe the Moon landings never took place.
Read Rand’s essay, Apollo and Dionysus (or listen, here: http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-works/apollo-dionysus.html
As a freshman in college, I never doubted that the lunar landing occurred. As an 8th grader, it never occurred to me to ask who (other than Oswald) benefited from the death of JFK. But by the time 9/11 rolled around, I had become a bit more skeptical.
I have no idea whether Neal Armstrong actually took ‘one small step for man.’ Other than the money spent (wasted?) I don’t care. But I am pretty sure that, if Oswald was actually involved at all, he did not act alone. And so it goes.
Oh, and Clinton ‘Wag[ged] the Dog.’
Hi Phillip,
I suspect there are things we were not told about the Moon, but I have no doubt the rockets took the astronauts there and that men did walk on the Moon. The Saturn V absolutely had the thrust to do the job (check the math) and unless the Soviets and the Brits and other countries that monitored the telemetry were also in on the scam, the things did make the trip.
I think the truly interesting question is: What did they find on (and about) the Moon?
“What did they find on (and about) the Moon?”
Dust, because the maid (wind) didn’t come in to sweep it away.
Of course the evolutionists were looking (hoping!) for any evidence that there may have been life there. Same now with Mars.
It appears highly likely there was life on Mars, because the planet almost certainly had oceans of liquid water, atmospheric pressure and a temperate climate for a very long time… before something went wrong.
Takes more than water to create life.
You know, it’s funny how the humanists refuse to allow the teaching of Intelligent Design as even a possibility in the GICs, but what are SETI and similar projects looking for? Evidence of intelligence based solely on pattern that does not seem random.
Saw a great cartoon once – 2 little green men in their saucer looking at the Manhattan skyline on their viewscreen. One says, “and we consider these to be naturally occurring geological formations.”
True – but the possibility seems reasonable (life on Mars).
Something that doesn’t fit the narratives we are told about man’s and the earth’s history.
Man, I haven’t read “Apollo and Dionysus” since around 1976. But then, I was so selfish back then.
Hi Rust,
Rand can be sententious, but she did a very good job re-popularizing ideas that had lain dormant and forgotten. I give her tremendous credit for that.
Mencken was a vastly superior writer who wrote about the same things – but he’s as obscure today (to most “laymen”) as the Aurochs he so frequently referenced!
No Congress sent bright young communists to GM to help them change those laws.
true, true. I remember well the early BMC Minis…. I had a 63 850 cc, it would jog along all day at 65 to 70 and return 55 mpg. I later got a 1275 Cooper S Stage Two tune… it too would jog along at 65 to 70 all day long and return the same 55 mpg. Same weight, wind pressure, rolling resistance, etc, same gearing.. but that 805 would top out at about 5500 RPM in any gear, whilst that 1275 could easily rev out to 8000. Now, when I put the hammer down and really flogged the Cooper, I could get there MUCH faster particularly on a fun windey track…. but the mileage returned would drop to perhaps the low 40’s. Had a friend with the 997 cc Cooper S, Stage Two tune, and his was a WHOLE lot faster than the stock single carb 850.. despite the increase in volume of the engine of about fifteen percent. So, tiny engines CAN produce significant horsepower and speed. I think the ulitmate was the one litre OHV Four fitted to the Anglia 105 E sedans in the early to mid 1960’s. SOme racers would take that, rework it, and fit it to a formula car or sports racer in the sub-litre sedan-derived class…. in race tune those would hit a 13,500 red line and produce something like 130 hp. Stock sedan tune, that red line was around 5500 and power was a walloping 32 or so.
SO.. maybe a return to tiny engines wouldn’t be such a bad idea.. IF the relative cars were shriven of their excess weight in garbage (FIFTEEN air bags, crash proof sode doors, etc? Really? ). Those of us who care to could always then “tune” them to produce some significant power. IF our stupid nannified Uncle would let us….
Light is cool.
Dude I know is working on a project Beetle… old Beetle. He’s got a turbo set-up on the thing and built the four to an estimated 220 hp.
Imagine this in a 1,600 pound car.
This is probably the craziest thing I’ve seen done to a Beetle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpb2Him9CUo
Looks almost stock too, if you don’t notice the couple of small protuberances on the engine cover.
The amount of change that they’ve “accomplished.” Could have been painlessly achieved by a minor cutting back the patrols of soldiers, fighter jets, air craft carriers, surveillance, police, mailmen, and all other impoverishing crap.
Environmentalists and champions of useless government “workers” and “jobs” are truly pathetic, and the bane of everyone’s existence.
If the people ever did start demanding even a reduction, let alone an end to “The Empire” tptb would frighten many of them off with stories about what it would do to employment. As if non-productive employment was beneficial to the economy.
There is only collapse. Real reform is not possible. Only fake reform.
I would agree with that assessment. “The system” is way too far down the slippery slope at this point to make any real reform possible. It is little more than a vast looting and killing machine, a criminal enterprise that dwarfs what most people refer to as “organized crime” in the sheer size and scope of its relentless scams and utter viciousness.
We’re at the point where people are scrambling around on the Titanic, putting up window dressings and rearranging the furniture. It’s not going to help folks, this ship is going down.
Prolly so. But this comment is too short for WP’s taste, so I have added this.
In the near future it would appear.
Actually, in a certain sense, unemployed workers ARE a benefit to the economy, for TPTB.
Unemployment makes the market price go down: Surplus of labor.
I’m not saying it’s a GOOD thing – just pointing out, there’s a economic “upside” if you’re a provider of jobs. What better way to motivate than both carrot (paycheck) and stick (termination, poverty, starving to death)?
Rev-0-Lution for the win… 🙁
that is the essence of the “broken window” economic model. Government exist for the chief purpose of providing an abundance of broken windows. Much like new recruits being “set to work” digging a hole… only to fill it back in and move twenty feet and dig another.
The single entity that uses the most petroleum in the world? Yep, the US military.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/06/05/mileage-military-vehicles-tech-logistics08-cz_ph_0605fuel.html
Old news for most of us, but consider the battle to secure the oil fields (and the saber rattling over ISIS) is mainly so the military can continue to function.
They need to secure it over there, so they have it when it’s time to use it here.
Of all places to read truth about the fight over oil, Rigzone published a good article a couple days ago about this very thing. It was a who supports who for what oil where. Not your usual “we look the other way” trade publication story.
The DoD recognizes this, and is investigating & investing in green technologies, such as hybrid vehicles, solar cells (for powering remote bases instead of generators), and bio-fuels.
This is primarily the Army and Marines. The Air Force has determined that it’s kind of difficult to fly a F-22 on anything other than an energy-dense liquid like jet fuel.
And of course the Navy has many, if not most of its ships powered by nukes.
Actually, per Facebook, I understand that the US doesn’t import much oil from Saudi Arabia et al. (OPEC).
Most of our current oil comes from our hemisphere. The pipeline is being blocked because Warren Buffet own stock in Northern Pacific, I think it was, and NP owns 80% or so of the rails from Northern Canada to the US…. So, he stands (along with NP) to not make money (they see it as “lose money”), to the tune of a few billion a year. (Per a facebook article, mind, so veracity is not likely. but I’d guess the underlying concept is correct.)
Not sure these all tie together as closely as people would like; I think Occam’s Razor is overused here. It’s more likely Action (A) causes reaction (B) causes reaction (C) … Reaction (ZZZZZZ), where the series stops when everyone is making profit off our backs / labors, and they can’t think of any way to further extract blood, I mean money, from us. Everything else is just window dressing. I think that’s also one of the reasons I’m so willing to be “pro-active” in my self-defense, I can see what happens when we don’t stop them after “Action (A)” – because I’ve been on the receiving end of a “long string of abuses” in the past – literally had it beaten into my skull.
I am glad that others have NOT had that experience, on the one hand.
OTOH, it means very few reasonable people see things similar to my view, and while unreasonable stormtroopers are great cannon fodder, they tend to be limited in intellect, high on superstition and fear, and make poor operatives. So, I could align with (ter’rist) orgs like ALF, say, but they’re only really good for eating cats. (think ALF, Alf, the comedy…)
And then, first time things don’t go perfectly, or worse, if things DO go perfectly…? Someone wants to show off or brag, and they flap their lips, and it’s a federal case… 😛
That leaves moderate, intelligent people with no way to progress towards a free-er society. Note that the Stormtrooper mental acuity is rampant among the populace, and thinking is limited at best… Most people want what’s good for them, not what’s good for everyone (or even most people.) It’s NIMBY all the way. We need landfills/incinerators/manufacturing, but NIMBY – put it in the n_gger’s back yard, next county over.
WTF? Methinks you’ve mis-used the N-word there, as you is the n_gger – your actions of NIMBY are the immediate problem, marking you like Caine himself, as selfish, self-centered, and uncaring towards your fellow man. Making Scrooge a humanist, a philanthropist, even, BEFORE his visits by the spirits, by comparison.
Anyway… We could do a LOT better by keeping our nose out of other countries’ business. But we have NIMBY Clover up the wazoo here, and they are solely interested in their own laziness and growth. Things haven’t changed, either – towns did the same with the Blacksmith. Kept moving him farther and farther away, because he smelled and made noise, so he was, “Not a good neighbor.”
Our blacksmiths of today are all manufacturing plants (move them outside the US so other countries get pollution, and we get lower labor costs). Shipping (automated trucks, railroad over drivers, shipping costs less than local manufacturing.) Add in the NIMBY/Clover-authortarian selfishness, and the turds float to the top… (E.G., Buffet and N-P RR. While they are providing a useful service, they are profiteering from it. And there’s a better way to do this, but it affects their profits. Does Buffet really NEED another few billion on capital? Does N-P, who actually does something useful? Do we need to keep paying higher costs? And do we need several billion pumped into big politics? Instead of just “Git ‘er done,” and cheaper fuel, local manufacturing, less dishonest bribery in politics, etc?)
Only way to stop the elites is to destroy them. I can’t see any way to financially choke them – even if 90% of the population boycotts Wal-Mart, N-P and Buffet will still get their $Bn’s from fuel and transport. By the time it trickles up to that level, we’re done. Can’t survive that long.
Which means the only real option, one way or another, is to reduce it back to Caine and Abel. If we’re Abel, there is no need for Caine… but Caine will strike us repeatedly, if we don’t protect ourselves. No different from the armed guards for our elites, when we get the “public option” of police. It’s separate but equal, which means… Separate is inherently unequal, remember?
We need to wake them up…
It’s like we’ve got a pair of deuces in the card game of life. We’re bluffing, and they know it, because they’ve got a camera on our cards. They think they have first-strike capabilities, they just want to keep the pot growing as long as possible, and then skip out on paying the bill (with the pot, of course.)
They have no skin in the game of real life…. Rockefeller and Morgan had more relations with the common people.
So, when these Elites aggress – as the do daily – we Bend over?
Poor plan, I think.
Climate change is a tautology. That’s what climates do – they change. D’oh!
Back before the watermelons had to admit that ‘Global Warming’ had ceased, they were very excited when the glacial ice cores indicated a correlation between temperature and CO2 levels. But then more detailed examination revealed that the CO2 was a trailing indicator, not a leading one. In other words, when temperature increased, CO2 increased. It was not CO2 causing the temperature increase. They don’t talk about the ice cores any more.
Yes, the study that published the ‘hockey stick’ curve was later found to be an error in statistical analysis. I believe the authors of the study were also part of the group of people who later on determined the curve was made in error. However, too late. Every hipster and San Franciscan spewed out the crap.
Even more interesting was the study done on ‘global dimming’ which argued that the rate of evaporation was decreasing throughout the world. Somehow they glued this together with global warming.
I tried explaining that very correlation (increased heat = increased co2) to hipsters in SF. I am sure everyone can guess how that went. Gosh I can’t wait for the next ‘big one’ in that city!
“the ‘hockey stick’ curve was later found to be an error in statistical analysis”
No, it was a deliberate misrepresentation of ‘facts’ that had been fudged to yield the desired result.
I was not aware they had deliberately misrepresented their research. If there is a peer-reviewed resource that makes the case that they did, in fact, purposely fudge the research I want to read it. If you have the link could you please send it?
I only know they did publish a study a year later in which they made emphasis on the limitations of their study.
The only person I believe made a misrepresentation of facts was Al Gore – using near decade old research while ignoring the very limitations that were mentioned in the study.
I don’t know that there is a ‘peer reviewed’ resource, because none of the peer reviewed journals want to admit they allowed it to slip through. Also, all the journals are bought and paid for by TPTB. I will take a look but I think the main evidence is in the Climategate emails.
Thanks, I’d appreciate that. Its difficult trying to convince some of my indoctrinated friends to at least glance at opposing views.
What is your opinion on Global Dimming?
What is your opinion on Global Dimming?
There are a lot of dimwits out there.
Hey you
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yHyUz7ZvrPE/UavLL4kMm4I/AAAAAAAAAGw/Trgrv3-4MY4/s1600/heyyou.png
Out there on the road
https://rewapednekar.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/wpid-wp-1427378876072.jpeg
Don’t help them
http://img05.deviantart.net/072b/i/2014/294/a/c/hey_you__don_t_help_them_to_bury_the_light_by_carolidraw-d83n38o.png
Great pictures to match the lyrics.
The research was interesting and I am looking into anything that refutes it. Check it out: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_prog_summary.shtml
ENLIGHTENING GLOBAL DIMMING AND BRIGHTENING
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00074.1
Review
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/wild/2008JD011470.pdf
Thanks Tor! I am reading through the first link now.
As I suspected, I could find no ‘peer reviewed’ journal article giving any credence to the possibility that AGW has been exaggerated, let alone false.
If you google ‘Climategate’ you get a wide variety of responses, including the usual Lame Stream Media’s ‘Move along. Nothing to see here.’
James Delingpole, a well known and unrespected (by the Extablishment) ‘Denier, and often given credit for the origination of the term Climategate, has quite a bit of material on the web. E.g., http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/
I will leave it to you to decide whether you believe him, but would not expect him to convince your ‘indoctrinated friends.’
As my late Father often said, “When people’s minds are made up. it’s hard to confuse them with facts.”
All that is required is paying attention to the data. Watch the shell game being played. Follow the red ball.
Look at the measured data, the ball. Not the estimated data. Not the data that has been corrected. Not newspaper reports or even peer reviewed studies or the other shells. Just the measured data.
Do it as soon as you can. I doubt we will be permitted access to raw data much longer.
You’d think this would be as good an argument as any to oppose all government funding of the sciences, especially since politicians love to cite scientific studies when they’re trying to inspire fear. After all, it’s so much easier to construct a fear narrative when politicians have the nation’s scientists in their back pockets. How best to introduce political bias into the sciences than for the government to employ the scientists themselves?
The intellectual class in human society is funded by the ruling class. The intellectuals get comfortable lives in exchange for finding reasons so the politicians can do what they want to do.
Some of the earliest such scams were climate/weather related. Obey the leaders and sacrifice so the rains will come and the crops will grow.
and they REALLY got quiet when the rest of the truth of that equation “escaped” the scientific community: it is the OCEANS which regulate CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 concentrations in sea water lead changes in atmospheric CO2….. and it is temperature changes in sea water that determines the saturation level of CO2 in the water. cool mechanism, actually, but there it is.
“They’ve got us coming – and going” but what they really want is us neither coming nor going. Or breathing, for that matter.
But they don’t realize they’re killing the geese that lay the golden eggs. Star Trek, the Next Generation, where there is no scarcity, has not (and will never) come to pass. If those of us still willing to work, even when taxed out the wazoo, can’t get to work, OPM will come to a screeching halt.
Oh, I forgot – the Fed can just make money out of thin air (and computer entries). They don’t even need paper and ink any more.
Actually, the reason for ST:TNG’s apparent material wealth is the replicator.
Note the “differences” from ST:TOS (The Original Series) to ST:TNG. Not much has really changed, technology-wise.
Holodecks, sure. Replicators, which were an offshoot of transporter technology. Minor advances in genetics, weapons, shields. Some advancement in propulsion.
But mostly, just larger ships. I guess you have to put the people SOMEWHERE?
You’ll also notice it’s a socialist society… Which they somehow imagine promotes a meritocracy, because everyone’s primary needs are met (Maslow’s first level of needs in the hierarchy.)
Further, you never get much outside of Starfleet (The U.N.-based omnipresent military/police/government body)
If that’s the future? Well, they still have crime, they still have poverty, they still have disease – you just need to look carefully. And it’s not on the outworlds, either, of frontier colonies.
Voyager recruited one of the key characters from a penal colony. He wasn’t unique. (And the ter’rists they merged into the crew were cut from the same mold as we are…)
Poverty shows up now and again when they’re on Earth (a total of what, about 5 episodes?) (And not the Q-involved pilot, where they go through space and time both, to a global war with drugged-up soldiers.)
I think we see the “tourist trap” version of the Star Trek universe…
no one pays much attention to that, it’s such a minor detail.
but there is STILL scarcity, even before the Ferengi came along with “Gold-pressed Latinum,” which supposedly couldn’t be replicated. In addition, replicators are crippled, so you can’t just replicate weapons (or components).
I see the cage bars. Pretty, gilded cage is still a cage.
> You’ll also notice it’s a socialist society… Which they somehow imagine promotes a meritocracy, because everyone’s primary needs are met (Maslow’s first level of needs in the hierarchy.)
It’s more correct to say that the world of Star Trek is a post-scarcity society. The replicators (energy in, tasty Raktajino coffee out) mean that people’s basic needs are met. As western societies have developed more/better technology, we’re seeing the same thing. Agriculture used to be the #1 employer in the US. Now with GPS guided tractors, it’s 1/100th what it was.
So what do people do with that portion of their day that used to be devoted to food gathering? Roddenberry’s answer was they go exploring.
‘Post-scarcity’ is a delusion. There is already more than enough to provide all everyone needs. But there will never be enough to fulfill everyone’s wants. Not to mention that redistribution results in lower production.
Eric,
I will being entering a local parade. There will be banner on the side of my truck indicating that global warming is a sham. Another banner will bring attention to the CO2 tanks in my truck bed and announce that the pretty girl waving to the crowd has opened all the tanks releasing this gas into the atmosphere. I wonder if I would get arrested.
In California, the worst place to own a car, the smog laws will make you vomit. $60+ dollars every two years to ensure your car meets emission standards. An entire economy rest on the state maintaining these laws. We are a state full of useless bureaucratic offices: CALtrans, DMV, DHS, and the list goes on. People actually rely on your misfortune to earn their fortune.
Of course, their are loopholes. For instance if your car is older than ’75 you are exempt. If you add up all the cost of owning a newer vehicle, in California, it might be more practical to build a classic street rod. Without smog laws applying to you – the savings could justify keeping the older car. $100+ per year for tags (that is a super conservative number), $60 every two years, and the cost of a speeding ticket every year. With that amount, why not put a big block into an older car and drive it around?
What is worse is that if you receive welfare they will make infinite repairs to your car to make it pass smog. Additionally, you can buy a non-working vehicle and have your county fix it. At the same time you can complain that you need furniture and they will take you to the furniture store and add that to the state/ county tab as well. (No, I am not exaggerating, if anything I am understating).
Hey, if I do ever go barmy enough to move back there I’ll bring about a 1970 or so Volvo, twin SU.s manual trans… I’ve made them able to cruise all day long at 85 and return 40 mpg. And no smog checks? Hooray!!! Or maybe the ’74 Mercedes 300 D…….. except drop in a later turbodiesel and associated gearbox……
I am right now leaning toward a late ’70s El Camino with a stock/mild rebuild 305 or 350, which (if I acquire one) I would lightly modify with an overdrive automatic and possibly a stand-alone TBI system. This set-up should easily be capable of 30 on the highway if driven lightly yet still have “ass” when you need it. Plus, lots of fun, too!
I think that overall our system is worse.
The only reason that they are able to play this card is that the American public is automotively illiterate. Few Americans know how a car works, the parts that go into it and physical tradeoffs between fuel economy and safety. Few governments are as anti-auto as the US. We kill automobiles through regulation. Other countries do it through fuel taxes, registration taxes and a huge sales tax on vehicle sales.
And they continue to believe the hype about chemical batteries. Every few weeks there’s a new story about how wonderful carbon nanotubes or some such lab experiment will lead to batteries that will last for days and recharge in seconds. It’s always just 5 years out because the things are inherently unstable. More unstable than gasoline. Yet the stories continue to be news items.
The reason for this, of course, is Moore’s Law. Basically the reason your new iPhone battery lasts longer than the old one is because the power consumption of the device is going down, not because the batteries are any better. LTE is designed to work with much lower transmit power, WiFi chips and graphics co-processors are better than ever, and processors are designed with power consumption over raw processing power in mind.
But you can’t do that with an electric car. Sure, you can lighten it up, but (as Eric has pointed out), safety has a high cost in weight. Adding more batteries quickly becomes a losing game because you have to haul around batteries that are drained but don’t get any lighter as they go flat.